


Seeker

by chuusei_teki_na_koe



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood As Lube, Corrupting Akira Kurusu, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, F/M, Guro, Heterosexual Sex, Identity, Jealousy, Knifeplay, Literary References & Allusions, Love/Hate, M/M, Masochism, Memory Alteration, Monsterfucking, Persona 5 Protagonist Has A Palace, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Persona Royal Trio, Philosophy, Pining, Plot, Porn With Plot, Sadism, Scary Clowns, Strangulation, Time Loop (Sort Of), Violent Sex, murder boyfriends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 162,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24269221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuusei_teki_na_koe/pseuds/chuusei_teki_na_koe
Summary: One phone call leads to Akira having his most fervent wish granted.A year before the Phantom Thieves ever existed, Akira stumbles into a Palace for the first time along with his not-really girlfriend, Kasumi. When they get split up, a handsome prince in white appears to give him a hand looking for her. Said handsome prince has a mission in the Metaverse, and he wants Akira on his side.But a certain girl with glasses and downcast eyes keeps dogging Akira and Goro's trails through the Metaverse--and Akira is tortured by visions of his new partner's death in a past life he doesn't remember. And what is this strange distortion that the nav says belongs to "nobody"?Something is wrong with this world, and someone is trying to keep Akira from figuring out what.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Cognitive Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Shadow Kurusu Akira, Akira/Sumire is a side thing but not endgame, Yoshizawa Sumire & Akechi Goro
Comments: 597
Kudos: 591





	1. Prologue 1: Cops and Robbers

**Author's Note:**

> The whole PT is tagged here, but aside from the Royal Trio, they don't actually show up until around 20 chapters in, so don't hold your breath.
> 
> There's also some Akira/Sumire content but it's still primarily shuake.
> 
> The story is abooout 85% done so far. If you would like to beta for me, I would really love that... ;_; Ongoing search/begging the internet, here. This whole thing needs editing.

Akira was expecting Akechi to turn him down, and his expectations were on the mark.

“I'm really busy right now,” Akechi told him over the phone, tone apologetic. “If I want to make proper time to investigate Sae's palace with all of you, then I need to focus on my schoolwork whenever I can.”

But that was exactly why Akira had called him on the phone instead of texting. He knew he could wheedle better, this way. “That's why I'm calling, to talk to you privately about our plans for Sae's palace. When the whole group gets together, we tend to just jump in without really thinking things through. I wanted to have some time to plan things out carefully with you.”

It was a rather blatant attempt at flattery and appeal to Akechi's pride in his intelligence, but it seemed to work.

“Aha-ha, wouldn't Nijima be a better choice for that? She knows Sae better, after all.”

“I've spoken with her already, but I want your perspective.” And clinching it with a direct appeal.

Akechi didn't say anything, but Akira could totally hear him wavering on the other end. “...All right. I can't stay long, though.”

x x x

When Akechi walked in the door at Leblanc that afternoon, briefcase in hand, Akira didn't look up right away from where he stood behind the bar, wiping down the espresso machine. He was waiting for Akechi to come to him.

“Hello, Kurusu.” Akechi came over to the bar counter, so at ease, you'd think he lived there himself, setting down his briefcase to take a seat.

“Hey.” Akira looked up, picking up a portafilter as he leaned casually on one leg. “What can I get you?”

“Surprise me.” Akira smiled brightly and folded his hands over the counter.

As Akira scooped out some beans, out of the corner of his eye, he noted Akechi's bare hands. Well, he couldn't well go out Michael Jackson style with one glove, right? Apparently, he didn't have another pair.

Akira felt strangely smug about this, having taken something from Akechi to keep as his own. It was like he'd marked Akechi, changed him.

His eyes slid back to the beans he was grinding, and he focused on making the coffee without saying another word until it was done.

Akechi didn't like his coffee black, but he didn't like it too sweet, either. Akira thought what he liked was somewhere on the vague line in between, but he could never be sure. Akechi would never straight-up say he didn't like either of these things, fuzzing it over with vague remarks and smiles. Akira had to fill in the blanks, seeing his reaction to each individual drink.

So he made Akechi a plain latte—if you steamed the milk right, that would bring out the natural sweetness of the lactose—served it to him, and watched Akechi's reaction as he brought the drink to his lips. Akechi's eyelashes lowered slightly as he took a sip, his lips gentle on the edge of the cup. You'd think someone like him would hold his cups daintily, but he slid all his fingers into the handle of the mug like he didn't want to let go.

Akira followed the path of his drink from his lips through his mouth to the bobbing of his Adam's apple as it went down his throat.

Akechi's expression was careful as always as he set the drink down, his lips still wet from the drink. “You did pretty well with this one, Kurusu,” he said with a smile. His hand was still on the mug, his thumb stroking the handle just slightly as he looked up into Akira's eyes.

Seemingly a compliment, but as usual, not an answer to the question of whether he liked it or not. Akira nodded in reply, looking straight back at him, but found nothing in Akechi's eyes but a polite veneer.

“Well, let's get down to business,” Akechi said, gaze sliding slightly to one side, as if avoiding eye contact. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

“Let's not talk about it down here,” Akira said as he wiped down the steam wand. “Finish your drink, and we'll go upstairs.”

x x x

Akechi had been to Leblanc before, but he'd never come up to Akira's room. When they went upstairs, Akira watched where Akechi's eyes went.

Akechi's notice covered a full sweep of the room, examining the desk, the TV, the star stickers on the ceiling. Was he looking more or less than most people would? Maybe more. But maybe that was wishful thinking on Akira's part.

But then Akechi came to stand in front of Akira's shelf. His eyes slid over the swan boat and the giant shogi piece and lit on the silver Gray Pigeon figure Akira had displayed on the bottom shelf. “I never took you for a Featherman fan, Kurusu.”

“Ah, well,” Akira raised a hand to bashfully fiddle with a curl of his hair. “Futaba got me into it.”

“Really,” Akechi turned around to face him, just a little bit of lighthearted derision coming out on his face. “I think most people your age would find it...well, a little childish.” He laughed. “Oh, though it's a harmless hobby, I'm not attacking you for it.”

No, that was definitely an attack. “Featherman is more a family show than a kid's show.” Sticking his hands in his pockets, Akira circled around Akechi to sit down on his bed, looking up at the other boy. “It's cheesy, but it speaks to universal values.”

“Really,” Akechi repeated, and his derision seemed to come out clearer when he was standing above Akira, looking down on him. Akira's eyes wandered between his lips, curved in a smile that might have been bashful, or might have been a little mocking, to his eyes, which may have been smiling and may have been not. “Like justice, and the power of friendship?”

“Yeah.”

Akechi stared at him a moment, his expression not so much as twitching, before he finally relaxed with a sigh, saying, “But it tends to present a rather naive view.”

“Not always.” Akira leaned back on his hands on the bed. “The theme of the third season of _Featherman R_ is straight-up the blurry line between villain and hero.”

Akechi waved a hand dismissively. “That was the intention, sure, but the execution was so lacking, it wound up saying the exact opposite. The production-side conflicts on the script become obvious by episode eight, while Watanabe as a director completely failed to work with the cast's strengths, and the Gray Pigeon arc was frankly better executed in the old Super Famicon game...” Akechi trailed off when he realized Akira was staring at him. Then he cleared his throat, cheeks coloring the slightest pink. “I watched the entire first three seasons of _Featherman R_ on DVD a while back when I was sick with the flu and had nothing better to do. It's not the sort of thing I normally indulge in, aha-ha.”

Akira raised an eyebrow at him. Then he got up and went over to the stack by his TV. “I have the fourth season here right up to the current episode, you know. Futaba records it every week for me.”

Akechi's eyes flicked over to the dubious-looking stack of burnt DVDs, then to Akira's face.

“We can just have it on in the background, while we talk,” Akira wheedled. And then without waiting for Akechi's approval, he popped in the first DVD and pulled the TV around so it was to the side of the couch and sat down himself, patting the spot beside him for Akechi to sit down.

They never really did talk about Sae's palace, but Akira hadn't been planning to talk about that from the beginning. Five minutes into _Featherman R_ and Akechi's eyes were glued to the screen, and Akira wasn't about to divert his attention.

Akira had seen the show already, so he wasn't that invested. His eyes kept wandering over to Akechi, who sat initially on the edge of his seat, hands on his knees, before eventually relaxing back into the couch. Akira wasn't sure how close he could go, how close he could get away with, so he positioned his left knee just shy of touching Akechi's, his arm slung over the back of the couch but not circling behind Akechi. Close enough that he could feel Akechi's body heat, but not close enough to touch.

Akechi was so into the show, though, he didn't even seem to notice Akira looking, so Akira decided to push his luck. Elbow stuck over the back of the couch, his hand brushed the shoulder of Akechi's sweater vest. When Akechi looked up at him, startled, Akira plucked a hair off his shoulder and tossed it away behind the couch. “Hair,” he said, briefly.

Akechi didn't turn back to the show, eyes resting on Akira. His surprise faded away into something unreadable. “Have you already forgotten that I said I hate you?” His expression was neutral, now. It reminded Akira of how he'd spoken the last time they'd met, when they'd fought, and their promise to settle it.

“I haven't forgotten,” Akira said smoothly, and he kept his hand right close to Akechi's shoulder, not touching, but making his presence known. “I'm just hoping to change your mind.”

Akechi didn't reply immediately, his eyes narrowing, and the eye contact lasted long enough to become even uncomfortable for Akira. “You just can't stand to have anyone dislike you, can you?”

“Plenty of people dislike me.”

“People who don't know you, sure.” Akechi turned his head aside, breaking eye contact. “But everyone you care about loves you. They think you hang the moon and stars.” His voice was flat, betraying nothing.

“You're exaggerating.”

“You think I am?” Akechi turned back to him. “You're not going to conquer me like you do everyone else, Kurusu. You'll never understand me. So we'll always be on opposite sides.”

Akira tilted his head with a crooked smile. “That sounds like a challenge.” His eyes travelled from Akechi's eyes to his lips and back again, lingering on every inch of skin along the way. Then he turned back to the TV neither of them were paying attention to anymore and said, as if changing the subject, “Remember when you suggested I wear your clothes?”

He turned back to Akechi to see his eyes widening in shock, and then he reached out to the gray blazer that was neatly folded over the back of the couch and pulled it on over his uniform shirt before he reached out to Akechi's tie.

Akechi only watched as Akira pulled it loose with one finger, undoing it entirely and snaking it off Akechi's neck to loop it around his own neck.

Akechi grimaced, and sighed. “You can't wear a tie with a turtleneck,” he said. “Take that off.”

Maybe Akechi just meant the blazer, because he seemed flustered when Akira took off the blazer and his shirt with it, holding out his hand for Akechi's shirt instead. Akira didn't say anything, just waiting, and Akechi sighed again, unbuttoning his uniform shirt to slip it off and hand it to Akira.

Akira put it on, eyeing Akechi's naked torso through lowered lashes as he buttoned it up. Akechi was skinny, but a hard kind of skinny, like an endurance runner. He wasn't as buff as Ryuji—Ryuji wasn't that lean, though maybe he had been when he'd been on the track team. Akechi's muscle was clear and defined, though Akira still wanted to feed him a beef bowl or three.

And he was covered in scars. They seemed pretty old and healed-over, but they criss-crossed his stomach, chest and arms, some small, some large and ugly.

When Akechi saw him looking, he said, “I had some bad experiences in the care system. It was a long time ago.”

 _Bullshit. You clearly got those from fighting shadows._ Akira had fought enough himself to know what a claw mark looked like. Humans couldn't hurt you like that.

As if embarrassed, Akechi snatched up Akira's shirt right away and pulled it over his head. The sleeves were a little short on him, but it fit pretty well.

“Well, might as well go all the way,” Akira said, and he stood up to undo his belt and kick off his pants, and Akechi sighed and did the same.

When they were finally standing there with each others' clothes on, Akechi said, “Are you satisfied now?”

“Not quite.” Akira pulled his glasses off and slid them over Akechi's nose. When his fingers streaked over Akechi's cheeks, they felt particularly warm.

“You didn't do the tie right,” Akechi said, reaching out to undo the uniform tie at Akira's neck, redoing it with deft and practiced fingers before pulling away.

“So how do I look?” Akira said, spreading his hands to show off his Detective Prince attire.

Akechi took a step back, putting his hand to his chin thoughtfully. “...It's an improvement on your usual,” he said after a long pause.

“Thanks.” Akira decided to take it as a compliment. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he said, “You look ready to steal hearts.”

Akechi laughed it off. “I'm often accused of doing that. I hope they don't arrest me!” He said like he was making a joke for the viewers on TV.

“You've already stolen mine.”

Akechi laughed again, but it petered out when he saw the look on Akira's face. They stood there in silence for an unbearably long time before he laughed again. “Kurusu, you're—”

Akira took a step forward, deep into his personal space, close enough that Akechi would be able to feel his breath, and cut him off, saying, “Let's play cops and robbers.”

Akechi stared back at him, and Akira had no idea what was going on in his head.

Then, suddenly, Akechi's arm shot out and he grabbed Akira by the tie, bringing their lips to smash together.

The kiss was awkward and messy, and Akechi wouldn't let it last long, shoving Akira backward to stumble onto the bed. Akechi followed him, kneeling over him as he brought their mouths together again, rapidly undoing all the buttons Akira had just done up so he could run his hands over Akira's chest, then shove his shoulders down onto the bed to pin him there.

They stayed like that for a minute, Akechi looking down on him with something like smug triumph in his eyes, a small but definite grin on his face as his chest heaved.

That look was what made Akira move. Grabbing Akechi by the shoulders of his shirt in a move Makoto had taught him for decidedly less debauched purposes, Akira flipped them over and went for Akechi's lips.

But it was like Akechi was expecting it—he bit, and he wasn't holding back at all, digging into the meat of Akira's lip until Akira could taste blood pooling in his mouth. When Akira jerked back, Akechi took his opportunity to get the upper hand again, throwing the both of them off the bed onto the cold floor of the attic.

Kneeling over Akira, Akechi got straight to the point, palming Akira's cock through his pants—already hard, Akira pressed up into his touch with a moan. When Akechi undid Akira's belt and started yanking his pants down with a frantic energy Akira had only seen in him once before, Akira helped, kicking off his pants to fling them to a corner of the room.

Akechi spread Akira's legs, bringing his mouth down over where Akira's dick was straining against his boxer-briefs to mouth it through the cloth a moment before his mouth traveled upward, licking a line from Akira's navel up his chest until their lips met again.

The wooden floor was painful against Akira's back as Akechi pushed his legs up and pressed his crotch against the cleft of Akira's ass. Akira could feel Akechi's erection through his uniform pants, but the taste of Akechi's tongue was drowned out by the blood in his mouth.

Akechi didn't speak, one of his hands clenched around Akira's left wrist in a painful grip while the other grasped the tie around his neck, pulling too tight for comfort. With each grind of his cock against Akira's ass, the tie got a little tighter, until Akira gasped, “...Akechi...” around the other boy's lips.

But it was like Akechi didn't even hear. Akechi was gasping like he was the one being strangled as he ground against Akira with furious intensity.

Now entirely unable to breathe, Akira shuddered underneath him.

Times like these, Akira tended to operate on instinct. His right hand flung out, groped around, found the utility knife that had fallen off his desk, flipped it with his thumb, and reached up to slice the tie off. He cut his own neck slightly at the same time, not too deep, but enough to leave a streak of blood on Akechi's uniform shirt. Then he dropped the knife and shoved Akechi off.

Akechi slammed back into the leg of the bed, hitting his head, but clearly not that hard, as he immediately bounced back. His eyes were half-dead in the weird way they sometimes got in battle—at first, Akira had thought he was just imagining that, since every time he thought he saw that, Akechi would turn around with a smile and laugh and pretend it had never happened.

Out the corner of his eye, Akira noticed that just under his bed were the handcuffs that had come with that year's Halloween costume, and he dashed forward, snatching them up and coming to straddle Akechi in the same motion, snapping one cuff over Akechi's wrist and yanking it back. Akechi immediately saw what he was going for and headbutted him straight in the nose with a sickening crack, but it was too late—the other end of the cuff was already on the bedpost. Akira grabbed Akechi's other arm by the wrist and twisted it into a lock, and when he had him, swiftly circled around to yank that arm behind Akechi's back and swap the cuff from the bedpost to his wrist so that Akechi's wrists were cuffed behind his back, around the bedpost.

It wasn't easy—Akira got kneed in the face for his efforts, adding a future black eye to his broken, bleeding nose. Mentally promising to buy Makoto one of those big plush pandas as thanks for all this valuable education, Akira went for Akechi's belt, undoing it to pull down his fly, bring out his hard cock and sink his lips down over the warm skin.

Akechi stopped fighting then, and Akira took that as a signal to continue. Neither of them said anything. Akira had the feeling that would break it, somehow—and it was doomed to be broken anyway, so might as well do everything he wanted now. It wasn't like this would change anything.

Or no—maybe in some corner of his heart, he had been hoping this would change something. He wanted to change Akechi's heart as much as he wanted to change any villain's. He wanted to win, to claim Akechi as his own, even though he knew that was futile, because Akechi was like him—Akechi wouldn't be owned.

Akechi didn't make a sound at first, only expelling a slow, rattling breath as Akira took his whole length, down to his throat. Akira bobbed his head rhythmically up and down, ignoring the pain in his lip and nose, determined to get something out of Akechi. His hands grabbed Akechi's ass, massaging, his thumbs stroking along the cleft of his cheeks. He wanted to hear Akechi moan and whimper and prove just how much he secretly wanted Akira.

Akira looked up, but couldn't see Akechi's face. His head was thrown back and out of view. The only sounds were the uneven rattle of Akechi's breathing and the wet smacks of Akira's lips and tongue on his cock.

Akechi's thighs came together a little, tensing, and he squirmed under Akira's grip, and his hips twitched up into Akira's mouth, then again and again, he thrust back into Akira's throat, the two of them making a rhythm together until finally Akechi made the softest sound, a smothered noise like he was biting his own lip, and the taste of salt joined the blood in Akira's mouth. Akira swallowed his prize down, not slowing until Akechi's shuddering had subsided and he went slack.

Akira finally pulled away. He wiped under his nose, immediately regretting it as touching it at all made it throb, then wiped the blood streaking down his chin with the back of his sleeve before looking at Akechi.

Akechi was slumped against the leg of the bed, hands behind him, legs spread, his cock out and not yet gone soft from his orgasm. There was a smear of blood over Akechi's stomach and underwear from Akira's face, and more of Akira's blood on his chin. His shoulders were still heaving, his eyes filled with a look of unadulterated loathing.

“Wanna return the favor?” Akira asked, cocking his head, hand sliding over his own dick.

With the look on Akechi's face when he opened his mouth, Akira was fully expecting a “Fuck you,” but that look was quickly smoothed away and replaced with a sigh.

“I have a lot of work to do tonight, Kurusu, so I should be getting home.”

Akira stared at him a moment, then burst out laughing. He should have known Akechi would never let him have what he wanted.


	2. Prologue 2: In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prologue might seem unnecessary and draggy and "just get to the point and have Maruki do his thing," but just Trust Me the content is important to stuff that happens later.

Akira did check himself in the mirror that night to yank his nose back into place—it wasn't the first time he'd broken it, and he was fairly used to this by now. 

But it wasn't until the next morning, when Morgana woke him up by kneading his chest in his sleep, then woke himself him to yelp at Akira, going “Damn, Akira! What the heck happened to your face?!” that Akira pulled out the hand mirror from his bedside, looked at himself and realized he kind of looked awful.

His nose was all swollen up, his eye was bruised and swollen, and his lip was scabbed over and puffy. This was sure to seal his delinquent reputation at school. This was not something a pair of fake glasses could hide.

“Did something happen last night with Akechi?” Morgana asked him, sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed and looking up at Akira.

“We went to Mementos together,” Akira lied without even thinking about it. With this sort of thing, it was best not to offer too many details, and let people fill in the blanks themselves.

“I could've healed you...” Morgana grumbled.

“It's not a big deal.” If Akira had been thinking, he would've popped off to Mementos to heal this himself, but his head had been elsewhere, last night.

When Sojiro saw his face, he said something like “Good god, kid, put some ice on that,” and made other worried sounds. Akira appreciated the concern—Sojiro worried about him more than his own parents did, these days, though that was a low bar—but Akira didn't say much to him, either. At school, everyone was, predictably staring and whispering. By lunchtime, a rumor had already started up that he'd beat up a kid in first year for bumping into him in the hallway, and Miss Kawakami called him over after class to ask if he was okay.

Just a few months ago, this all would have bothered him. But now, it seemed comically unimportant.

Each of his friends expressed concern and asked the same questions when they saw him, and Akira offered them the same brief excuse. There was no need to tell them more than necessary.

Of course, now that everyone had seen him, he couldn't go miraculously healing his wounds away—that would be even more suspicious. He'd have to let it heal naturally.

He'd already had plans to meet Kasumi that day, and when they met up at the park for more training as usual, upon seeing him, she gasped. “All you all right, Senpai? What happened?”

“You know,” Akira said. “The usual business.”

Kasumi leaned a bit closer, lowering her voice as she said with clear concern, “Usually you can heal yourself, though, right?”

Akira scratched his head. “I honestly just forgot.”

She still seemed worried, but didn't press, and once they got started training, Akira would have forgotten all about his face, but it seemed she couldn't, as she kept giving him looks.

Finally, after about half an hour of solid workout, at the point when Akira was really sweating, it seemed Kasumi couldn't hold it in anymore.

“You know, if you ever need help, I could join you,” she said earnestly, hands clasped together under her chest.

Akira shook his head, pulling a sports towel out of his bag to wipe his face as he caught his breath. “It's okay. And you've got your training, right?”

“But...” she looked down. “If you're really in trouble... And besides, you're always helping me, but I don't feel like I've done anything for you.”

“You're helping me right now,” Akira pointed out, and Kasumi giggled.

“Yes, of course... Sometimes, I feel like this benefits me more, though? They say that teaching helps you learn better, and we work out together. And honestly,” she got an embarrassed smile, “I'm not sure how much you can get out of an odd day of training once every few weeks. This is more like a casual workout than actually accomplishing anything.” She looked at Akira's face, then waved her hands, flustered. “I mean, you're in good shape, and you have natural talent! But even casual students will practice at least three times a week...”

“I do get practice, in a way. It helps, on the other side.”

Kasumi got what he meant. “Ah, true. But...it feels different there, doesn't it? You can move faster, jump higher, do everything exactly the way you imagine. Real life takes ten times the practice for a fraction of the results...” She sighed. “If only I could move like that in real life...” She shook her head as if snapping herself out of it. “Anyway, I'd like to help you in any way I can. Don't feel like you have to hold back with me.”

“I appreciate it,” Akira nodded, slinging the sports towel around his neck. “But I'm fine, really.”

Kasumi was smiling up at him, but she didn't quite seem like she bought it. “You do have your other friends to rely on, I suppose...” She stared at his face for an uncomfortably long moment, and her hand reached up to hover right in front of his mouth, then withdrew. “Aha, what am I doing?” She grabbed her own hand and spun around, clearly flustered. “I guess I just miss having someone rely on me, you know, my sister used to run to me all the time whenever she hurt herself, I'm pretty good at first aid and dealing with pulled muscles or...”

“If you want to kiss it better, I won't say no,” Akira said, fully meaning that to be a joke, but Kasumi jumped nervously and slowly turned back toward him. She looked at him with upturned eyes as if searching his face.

Akira would be lying if he said he never thought about it. He tried not to be creepy, but being a man of flexible tastes and also having eyes in his head, he had, in fact, noticed that Kasumi had an amazing body, and well, she was, uh, clearly very bendy. The thoughts had been had. And he liked her. Akira was drawn to dedicated people, and Kasumi had that in spades.

Just, she really came off as the innocent and bashful type, so Akira was shocked when she darted forward to peck his lips, right in the middle of public, in the park. She pulled back to look at him, then leaned forward again, catching his lips with a longer, but still feather-gentle touch, this time.

Her kiss was completely opposite from the one that had given him this split lip, sweet and light where his had been intense and violent, and Akira responded in turn. Maybe this was just the way he was. If Akechi bit him, Akira would gladly throw him down on the floor—and all that seemed perfectly reasonable in the moment—but if Kasumi shyly pecked him, he'd treat her with gentle care, and would never consider anything else.

And Akira was struck by her boldness. He'd had to corner Akechi to get that kiss, but she was so shameless about this, Akira was actually feeling like the embarrassed one for kissing in public.

And yet, and yet, even though she was absolutely nothing like Akechi, though she was so different from him that it was a relief, when she drew back again with a shy smile, Akira's gut reaction was suspicion.

Why? There was no reason for him to doubt anything about her. She was so clearly and obviously a cinnamon roll through and through.

Well, though that had been his first impression of Akechi, hadn't it? He'd seemed very initially charming and disarming, a non-threatening pretty boy who liked to eat cake and smiled a lot. And just how fucking off the mark had he been there?

How well did he know Kasumi, really?

Suddenly, Akira was digging through every memory he had of her, analyzing every one for possible suspicious content. When they had run into each other in that strange palace, had that been a coincidence? Or had she arranged it? Had her awakening to her persona really been recent?

He knew these suspicions were crazy. But they also seemed perfectly sane.

Akira leaned down to give her a quick kiss back to close the awkward pause he'd created before turning around to toss his towel down by his bag on the ground so he'd have an excuse to hide his face for a second. “I can't believe you did that in the middle of a park,” he said, turning back to give her a wry smile. “I wasn't expecting that.”

Blushing, she turned away from him. “It was just to kiss it better, okay?” That was the dumbest justification ever, but Akira let her get away with it and didn't tease her.

Kasumi was silent for a moment. Akira was about to say something to break the awkward silence between them, when she suddenly said, still facing away, “If you ever need anything, even just to talk, then don't be afraid to call me, okay? I'm busy, but not too busy to chat a bit.” Then she turned back to face him, looking at him with sincerity.

“Sure,” Akira nodded, just to allay her anxieties. If she called him, he would come handle whatever she asked and be glad to do it.

But he wasn't going to call her.

“All right, then after saying all that stuff about being helpful, I'd better train you hard, huh?” Kasumi said with renewed cheer, and they went back to training.

x x x

Akira tried calling Akechi after that, but only got his voice mail. This was nothing new. Akechi never answered calls from him, and only replied to his texts with polite messages hours later, or the next day. At first, Akira had thought it was just because he was busy. Then he'd started to think that Akechi was like—playing games with him, trying to keep the upper hand, since he would occasionally text Akira on zero notice and say he wanted to hang out. He basically had no respect for Akira's time at all.

Now, he felt quite keenly that Akechi was avoiding him.

While they were investigating Sae's palace, Akechi always kept a carefully measured distance away from him, engaging only when they were talking business. It wasn't really much different from normal—Akechi never really chatted with him when they were together with the Thieves. Whenever Akira looked at him, Akechi just pretended he didn't notice.

Akira wasn't even sure what he wanted to do, or say. He just figured there had to be something, even though he knew full well there was nothing.

It wasn't like he was in love with Akechi. Not in the least. He would admit he'd been strangely drawn to Akechi, and thinking back, perhaps he'd somehow sensed that Akechi was a persona user, even then. He did have a good hunch for these things, so maybe that was all it was.

There had been overtures at friendship and tentative flirtation, though Akechi had always held back, never making it explicit enough to call for a rejection. Akira had had a bit of a crush. But Akira had never really known him. And Akechi certainly didn't know him, either.

It hardly counted as a betrayal when Akira had never trusted him in the first place.

Sitting at the table in the safe room with his friends gathered around to discuss the situation, Akira's eyes kept slipping over to Akechi, who stood behind the table, leaning against the wall. He always removed himself like that. He knew how to read the air, how to sense when he wasn't welcome and place himself in the optimal position to avoid conflict.

Finally, after all this staring, Akechi deigned to look back at him. There was absolutely nothing in his eyes, and Akira broke eye contact first. Not because he couldn't handle it. He was just worried he would give away too much hostility and ruin their plan. He wasn't as good an actor as Akechi.

“Are we ready to head to the maze?” Makoto confirmed with the group.

“I think we just gotta go in, man,” Ryuji said, leaning back on his chair with his feet kicked up on the table. “We can't plan for it if we don't know what's in there.”

“I can barely sense anything in there,” Futaba nodded, “So you'd better be ready for anything. Booby traps, pits, swinging axes, flames shooting out of walls...” She seemed more excited than terrified at the prospect, though.

“You play too many video games,” Ryuji shot back at her.

“I don't wanna hear that from you.” Futaba stuck her tongue out at him. Seeing her able to be cheeky like that at their friends, Akira was struck by the thought that she'd come a long way.

“Are you forgetting that we actually ran into swinging axes back in Kamoshida's palace?” Ann pointed out.

“The sort of traps that appear in a Palace are reflective of its owner's mindset,” Akechi said from his position against the wall, “So it might be productive to consider the sort of traps or pitfalls might occupy Sae's mind, or the sort of danger she envisions in the world.”

 _And you know that from experience, huh?_ Akira thought bitterly.

Makoto's head lowered as she stared at the table. “...I honestly don't know. I feel like I'm only just now realizing how I don't really know her.”

That was a feeling Akira could sympathize with, right now.

“Well, then all we can do is take it like always,” Akira said with a nod, and they wrapped up the meeting, finished their break, and set off again.

x x x

There were traps.

The party had taken care to stay close, in the darkness, but the way the shadows moved, it was almost like they were trying to separate them. When the bulkhead slammed down, separating Akira from Ann and Haru, he just barely leaped out of the way in time to avoid getting squished.

“Oracle?” Akira immediately called out, but he heard no response from her. The space around him was quiet and dark.

“It looks like she can't reach us,” came a voice from not far to his left along with approaching footsteps, and once Akechi was less than an arm's length away, Akira could finally dimly make out the outline of his face.

“Then we'll have to find a way out ourselves,” Akira said with a nod. Then he reached out his hand.

“Huh?” Akechi seemed genuinely confused by the gesture, which Akira couldn't help but be amused by.

“So we don't get separated.” Akira kept his left hand held out. “We can both keep our dominant hands free, this way.”

“Oh, Joker, don't tell me this was all just a ploy to hold hands with me,” Akechi said in a way that sounded like friendly teasing, but Akira couldn't help but read as meaner than his tone implied.

Akira just kept his hand extended, and after a little more hesitation, Akechi finally took it, and they started walking slowly and cautiously. Akechi kept his laser sword out, its glow lending a slight illumination to their surroundings.

“I'm sorry,” Akira said after they'd been walking in silence a while. The lack of enemies around them was suspicious, and it only made Akira more tense. But this would probably be his only chance to say this. “I got carried away.” He knew Akechi would know what he was talking about.

“You're apologizing about that?” Akechi sounded sincerely surprised. But well, it was easy enough for him to fake sincerity. “After I did all that to your face?”

“...This doesn't really bother me. You seemed upset.”

Akechi chuckled. “You're the one who called me out as the competitive type. I just felt like I'd lost.”

Was that really all it was? In the dark, Akira couldn't see his face, and even if he could, he wouldn't be able to divine what Akechi was really thinking, anyway. “You felt like you lost, when you're the only one who got to cum, huh.”

Akechi laughed, harder this time, not just a reserved chuckle, and Akira almost felt like it was a real laugh. He wanted to believe it was. “Is that why you keep calling me? You feel blue-balled?”

“You could say that.”

A sigh in the dark. “Joker, this isn't—”

Akechi didn't finish. Akira felt the hand ripping away from him as Akechi hit the ground in a roll, dodging the Eiga that had come at him from behind utterly silently. Akira hadn't even noticed the enemy sneak up on them.

Enemies, rather. Akira couldn't quite make out their shapes in the dark, but they were blasting darkness spells from every direction, magic flaring up right in the spot Akechi rolled to.

Akira was already swapping to a persona that would nullify their attacks, dashing into the dark with his knife at the ready. There were too many for him to be cautious—he had to go all out, or nothing, and he had to trust Akechi to handle himself.

He heard sounds of impact, gunshots, brief flashes of light as Akechi's spells exploded in the air. Akira handled the shadows on his end, pausing only a moment to catch his breath, then called, “Crow?”

“Over here.”

“You finish them off?” Akira asked as he worked his way back to Akechi, heading for the distinctive glow of his sword.

“Yeah.”

Now that Akira was closer, he saw Akechi was slumped over slightly, his hand pressed against his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Akira asked, and he saw the spreading red under Akechi's hand.

“I'm fine,” Akechi said, but his voice was a little breathy-sounding.

He cursed. Grabbing Akechi's arm, he dragged him over to the wall, following the wall to a corner. It wasn't like this was safe, but he couldn't wait. The fact that Akechi was following him without protest meant that it was bad.

Akira usually looked out for his friends. He always made sure he was still standing, so that if they fell, he could heal them. But he'd assumed Akechi could take care of himself. He'd assumed Akechi didn't need him.

Healing spells worked best if they hit immediately after the damage was done. An enemy could practically slice you in half, but if you smacked your buddy on the back to hit them with a Diarahan a split second later, you'd be jumping to your feet in a roll again.

It had been a good fifteen minutes since Akechi had first rolled away from him, dodging that spell. If he'd had this wound that long, then healing it would be a bitch. Akira wasn't sure of the logic behind this, but he figured it was something like when you get a nosebleed and don't realize it's bleeding until a minute later, when blood is all over your chin. In a world where awareness is everything, the longer you're aware of an injury, the harder it sticks.

“Lie down,” Akira told him.

“What are you going to do?” Akechi asked, but he did as told.

“Heal you. Stop talking.”

Akira grabbed Akechi's sword and thrust it into the wall over Akechi's face to illuminate the both of them. Akechi twitched a little when he did that— _did you think I was gonna stab you?_ Akira thought wryly. Then Akira took his knife and placed it at Akechi's collar.

Akechi looked at him. His lips were pulled tight with pain, and he was looking at Akira was dead eyes. His hand reached out to grip Akira's sleeve. His grip was surprisingly tight for someone who was currently bleeding out, his fist trembling.

_You honestly think I'm going to stab you, don't you?_

Akira wasn't sure if he was angry or shocked at that. He just sliced through Akechi's coat and undershirt with his knife, opening it up to reveal the wound beneath. Akechi's hand dropped limply.

“This is gonna hurt, I warn you,” Akira said, and then as an afterthought, he rummaged in his pocket and got an odd piece of leather he'd collected off some shadow a while ago and tucked away for later, and shoved it in Akechi's mouth. “Don't scream, you'll call more shadows.” Akechi bit down on the piece of leather and nodded. There was already sweat beading on his forehead.

Akira tugged off his gloves, using his left to pull off his mask to summon Yatagarasu as he pressed his right hand against the almost surgical open slashes on Akechi's stomach, digging his fingers under the layer of skin and fat to feel for the deepest point of the wound.

Summoning a persona for a continuous period of time like this was exhausting. Usually, you just ask it to do one thing, and then it goes. But for this, you had to hold it until it was done.

As promised, Akechi didn't scream. He made a bit of a strangled noise and jerked a bit, and his hand shot out to grab Akira's jacket, pulling it hard, but he didn't make too much noise.

Akira kept his hand buried in Akechi's stomach, feeling the flesh and organs shift around his hand—he couldn't start pulling out until he could feel it close around him, driving his hand out. Akechi's whole stomach was slimy with blood, seeping down to stain his white pants dramatically, and Akira was sure he was getting it on himself, too.

It felt like it took an eternity, but eventually, Akira felt the flesh closing in on his hand, slowly pushing it out, until Akira's hand was spread flat on Akechi's stomach, closing up the last opening of the surface skin. Akira let his mask fall.

Akechi's hand finally released Akira's coat, and he ripped the piece of leather out of his mouth and lay there for a minute, gasping. “You weren't kidding when you said that'd hurt,” he said after a minute when he seemed to settle down. “Have you done that before?”

Akira nodded. “A couple times. Yours has been the worst so far, though. I don't think it hurt Skull this bad.”

Akechi slowly pushed himself up, turning around so he could lean his back against the wall. His hand went immediately to this hilt of his sword to yank it out of the wall. “You could've just done nothing,” he muttered, almost too quiet for Akira to hear. He kind of wasn't sure if he heard _could have_ or _should have._

Akira decided to ignore that.

“It's not safe here. Come on.” Akira offered him a hand, and Akechi took it, heaving himself up. But when he tried to take a step, his legs were wobbly and he pitched forward into Akira's arms.

They stood like that a moment, Akechi leaning on him, head hanging over his shoulder. Akechi's breathing was loud in Akira's ear. The blood on Akira's right hand was feeling sticky and dry, by this point.

Akira wasn't sure he wanted to let go.

“Can you walk?” Akira asked after a minute.

Without a word, Akechi pushed off him, taking a step back. “We've wasted enough time. Let's go.”

“Are you okay? You can lean on me,” Akira said, but Akechi had already turned away.

“I don't need your help, Joker.”

Sword dangling from his left hand, Akechi was already walking off.


	3. Prologue 3: No Exit

By the time Akira and Akechi made their way back to the rest of the group, Akechi had re-materialized his princely attire, and it was as white and clean as when he had first stepped into Sae's palace that evening. Perhaps this wasn't surprising, since changing your appearance in this world basically just came down to force of will, but his ability to comport himself as if he hadn't just been literally about to die was impressive, to say the least.

It made Akira wonder if he had practice dragging himself back from the brink like that.

The team decided to call it a night after that.

Akira didn't try calling Akechi again, after that. Maybe it had stung a bit to have Akechi say out loud that he'd been calling over and over. That made it clear that Akechi was deliberately ignoring him.

And after what had happened in Sae's palace, was there any more point in saying anything? Akira had already shown everything with his actions, and the answer was silence.

Surprisingly, though, Akechi was eventually the one to call him just a couple nights before they were to submit the calling card to Sae Nijima, inviting him to the jazz club with nothing more than a simple, _I'm at the jazz club tonight. Come down if you have the time._

Of course Akira was going to fucking go.

Akechi waved him over to the table when he walked into the club, the same pleasant smile on his face. “I'm glad you could come, Kurusu.”

Akira sat down, dropping his bag in the basket under the table. “Are you? I thought you hated me.” Dancing around this was getting exhausting. So he'd cut as close to the truth as he could.

Akechi looked at him, blinked, and laughed. “Well, I suppose tonight is a fine time for some honesty.” He nodded. “I hate you, but I enjoy our time together. I've never lied about that.”

Akira leaned back in his seat to look straight at Akechi. “Aren't you contrary.”

“That's not really what it is.” Akechi folded his bare fingers together and rested his chin on his hands. It was cute gesture, and Akira wondered if it was calculated, or natural. “You can't stand having anyone hate you, can you? You want to win me over.”

At this point, Akira wasn't going to deny that. “I do. But I don't think I can.”

Akechi nodded at him. “So you understand. That's what I like about you.” And he took a sip from his drink, finishing his glass. The server came around then to take their orders, and Akechi ordered another of the same. Akira ordered a random drink off the menu he'd never had before.

“You like me, but you hate me, huh.” Akira sipped his new drink. It wasn't very good, but he could grow to like it. “That's what Futaba would call a tsundere.”

Akechi chuckled, but it sounded deeply insincere. “People are attracted to those they see as similar to them. It's why people generally make friends with their own sex, and the reason for racism, nationalism and other forms of preferential bias. It's a motivation for safety and belonging. If your social group is like you, then they won't kick you out. And if you don't fit in, you'll pretend like you do, at least, to prevent exclusion. It's survival mechanism from a time when social exclusion meant death.”

“What are you trying to say, here?” Akira leaned his elbow on the table, turned toward the other boy.

“You know what the uncanny valley is?” Akechi fiddled with the straw in his glass. Akira's eyes couldn't help but be drawn to that gesture.

“Of course.”

“A creature that looks entirely unlike a human isn't disturbing. You don't look at a cat and shudder with the terror of it. But map just a tad of those catlike features onto a human—”

“—and you get fetish porn.”

“...let's say a horse,” Akechi corrected himself. “And it becomes disturbing. It's the similarities that make it so revolting.”

They were both silent for a long moment, taking sips of their drinks. Finally, Akira said, “You can't stand having anyone hate you either, huh?”

“How perceptive of you to notice.” Akechi set down his drink, tongue darting out to lick his lips as he straightened in his chair. “The difference is that I have to work to make people like me.”

Akira leaned forward in his seat. He wanted to move his chair closer, kick away this table between them. But he knew Akechi had placed it there deliberately. “You resent that my relationships are real.”

Akechi's face didn't even twitch. He'd come here ready. “Is that even what's important, here? What interests me...” His eyes flicked to his glass, then straight into Akira's eyes. “Is who you are without all that. What do you have left if all of that is stripped away from you? Could you even manage on your own? Who are you in a room where there's no one else, not even that cat of yours?”

Akira opened his mouth to give a flippant answer, then closed it. Considered. “I'm not sure such a person exists.” He paused. “For anyone.”

“Ah,” Akechi smiled in that way that Akira just couldn't read. “Hell is other people, right?”

“Maybe you see it that way.” Akira took another sip of his drink, and the two of them passed another long moment in silence, just listening to the smooth jazz in the background.

Oddly enough, even knowing what was going to happen in a couple of days, this silence wasn't uncomfortable. Eventually, Akechi was the one to break it.

“I think,” he said, stirring the ice in his drink around uselessly again as he looked down at his glass, “that perhaps if everything were stripped away from you, I wouldn't hate you anymore.”

Akira tilted his head. “Is that what you want?”

Akechi looked at him for just the briefest moment before looking back down at his glass again, and he didn't properly answer the question. “I just want to know who you are in the dark, Kurusu.”

“Maybe I want to know who you are in front of a mirror.”

“Don't you already know that?” Akechi smiled at him, and for some reason, this smile hurt more than all the others.

Akira sighed and rubbed his face. “Do you think—do you think there's any world where we could have been...friends?” He stopped himself from saying the other thing. They both knew that was out of the question.

Akechi sighed back at him. “There's no point in what-ifs, Kurusu. This is the way things are. Only a god could change reality.” He looked down at his drink, then took the smallest sip, as if he wanted to make it last as long as possible. “I don't regret anything. But...I wish we had more time. For everything.” His voice was soft, and the closest to vulnerable Akira had ever heard it. Akira bit his lip on the inside of his mouth, but made sure it wouldn't show.

That made him wonder if Akechi did the same sort of thing.

Akira fully downed the rest of his drink.

“All right, Akechi, I admit it,” he said, setting his glass down a little too hard. “I hate you, too.” And it felt strangely refreshing to get that off his chest, even though he hadn't realized it until now. Somehow, it had been hard to recognize that, buried under all the other feelings that were hard to name.

Or maybe he hadn't wanted to admit it—to admit that he wanted to beat Akechi and see him proven wrong, to drag him down off his high horse, to force him to bend. To get into his heart and brand him there. To tear down everything he'd ever planned and replace Akechi's values with his own.

But then again, the fact that he couldn't do that was what made him so obsessed.

Akechi grinned back at him, folding his fingers in front of him. “I wasn't expecting a confession tonight, but it's a pleasant surprise.”

“...But,” Akira continued, “I wish I could know you. Really know you. And I feel like I never will.”

Akechi didn't answer. He just looked at Akira, then down at his glass. There was still the slightest bit of red liquid lingering there at the bottom.

They didn't really speak after that, just listening to the music in silence, lingering in the bar until closing time.

Finally unable to stay any longer, they stood outside the jazz club, white breaths puffing out into the dark.

“Come over to Leblanc,” Akira offered, figuring he had nothing to lose in asking.

Akechi shook his head. “I think you know by now that I would only hurt you.”

“I can handle it a little rough,” Akira joked.

Akechi smiled back at him, and Akira knew he wasn't talking about rough sex.

Then he walked away, lifting a hand with his back turned as his only farewell, and Akira heard what had been left unsaid.

_I think you know by now that you would only hurt me._

x x x

Tension. Clash. Victory.

Akira had taken that hateful smirk off Akechi's face and pasted it on his own, and it had felt so good to do it, to get the upper hand.

Any superhero would feel great, to walk off the battlefield alive, even if any number of scars had been made there. No matter how much it hurt, it was all still okay if he was doing it in the name of what was right. His convictions would see it through.

And Akira had never had any doubts about being in the right. Maybe some of the others had, but Akira had firmly believed in everything they were and did.

Not until he'd heard those two shots behind the bulkhead.

He'd set it down, for the moment. He'd told himself, Akechi was smart and he was strong, and he'd gotten this far all on his own—he'd survived somehow.

He'd just texted Akechi, once, to make sure.

_I'm counting on you to fulfill our promise._

He never got a reply. But that just meant Akechi didn't want to reveal himself.

A week or so after the fight, Akira was in the attic playing video games. They'd beaten Shido, he could relax. Everything was over.

It wasn't until a ways into the old Super Famicom game he'd bought from the used game store that he remembered Akechi having said something like, _the Super Famicom game did it better._ No, wait, he'd said something more. What else had he said? He'd said something else. What?

“Akira? What's wrong?” Morgana asked from the other chair, and Akira realized he hadn't touched any buttons for a good couple minutes, and he was just staring at the TV.

What the hell had Akechi said to him that night? It hadn't even been a month ago, and already Akira was forgetting?

Akechi liked _Featherman._ You wouldn't guess it, but he was clearly a hardcore fan. And now, having seen his outfit as the black mask, it was clear he went far beyond common fanboyism. Goro Akechi loved _Featherman,_ and Akira had never once sat down and had a conversation with him about it.

“...Akira?”

Akira got up, turned off the power on the game console, set down the controller, and walked over to stand in front of his bookshelf. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at his Gray Pigeon figure. “Can you leave me alone for a while, Morgana?”

“Are you okay?” Morgana asked.

Akira nodded without turning around. “I'm fine. I just want some privacy.”

“...Okay, then.” Morgana seemed to hesitate, but eventually, Akira heard his footsteps padding down the stairs and out of earshot.

Akira took a deep, rattling breath and sank down into a squat, pulling off his glasses to lay them gently on the floor in front of him. Arms over his knees, he closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and swallowed a choke.

What had Akechi been thinking about when he'd looked at this _Featherman_ figure?

Akira hadn't asked.

What did Akechi think of the fourth season of _Featherman R?_

Akira hadn't asked.

If he didn't know Goro Akechi, if he'd never really known Goro Akechi, then whose fault was that but his own? Who was the one who'd really held himself at arm's length, in the end? Which of them had been the one to sit down at the counter at Leblanc and confess all his fucking childhood trauma, while Akira had just stood there and nodded in silence?

What sort of arrogance had he had to walk in thinking, _oh, if I save his life, and he doesn't want to tell me everything, then that's it. There's no hope, we're just irreconcilable opposites, devoted to our own convictions and destined to be in conflict._

Akira gasped for air, then buried his face in his arms. It was less a sob and more a smothered scream.

Who was the real liar, here? The one who had said _I think you know by now that I would only hurt you_ and then followed through on that promise? Or the one who preached friendship and joining hands and yet had been plotting to screw the guy over, never once offering him a real out? Because an out where you had to break everything you were to survive was not an out.

And now that Akira knew, now that he got that there had never really been an out for Akechi, that he'd been surrounded by enemies on all sides the whole time, just playing the best hand with the cards he'd been dealt. Akira didn't pity him in the slightest. That was who Akechi was in the dark. Strong and defiant, up until the end.

Akira got up, turned around, wiped his face. For a second, he thought he had himself under control, but then it started again. He wanted to break something, but everything in this room full of gifts from his connections was too precious to him, and he couldn't bear to do it.

This, this crying, it was so useless. It didn't accomplish anything. He dragged his sleeve across his face again, pulled out his phone, looked at it.

Saw Akechi's name at the top of the contacts column. Threw the phone down onto his bed. Went down to his knees, shoved his face into the mattress and made it take every sound he made.

He'd blown it again and again and again. Thinking back now, a million chances to change things. Games of billiards and darts where Akira had just thought about showing off and looking cool in front of this famous detective who seemed to be good at everything, coffee dates where they'd both danced around the truth and gotten halfway to flirting before pulling back, afraid of rejection, afraid of looking pathetic or desperate, both of them so caught up in their image that it was pathetic and desperate, moments in Mementos when Akechi had seemed like someone else, that night when Akira had definitively fucked it up by thinking with his dick, when Akechi had shown who he really was and Akira had responded in kind.

A million chances to know him. A million chances to discover the truth. And all that had been getting in the way had been his pride, his ego, his desire to win.

_Maybe I want to know who you are in the mirror._

Akira sobbed into the bed, and hated himself for every moment of it. He didn't deserve to mourn. He deserved a smack in the face. Or maybe a bullet between the eyes.

Cheek lying against the side of the mattress, Akira groped for his phone again, scrolling down his list of contacts. How absurd was it that he had so many people he would drop everything for, and yet, he didn't feel like he could call a single one of them?

_By the way, there's this boy who tried to kill me, who I legitimately hated but also had a raging crush on and oh yeah one time we fucked and he just about strangled me and also kicked me in the face and that was actually kind of hot? Anyway, I killed him instead, because he came to try to kill me for a second...or maybe third time? I'm losing count. And now I'm having a bit of a sad, and I'd like to talk about it, because I think if I don't, I might just jump on the train in Mementos and take it all the way to the bottom and never come back._

Akira smacked the phone back down on the bed again. He imagined talking to the other Thieves about this.

_By the way, Futaba, I was half in love with the guy who killed your mother..._

No. Futaba and Haru aside, even if the others welled up some sympathy or empathy, none of them looked at Akechi like he did. They saw the circumstances, they pitied him. They didn't _see_ him.

And being in the position he was, he couldn't show the other Phantom Thieves that their strong, reliable leader was just about on the verge of a total breakdown.

Picking up his phone again, Akira scrolled down the names right to the end, when he got to _Yoshizawa._

She'd said to call her about anything, hadn't she? She was someone who knew about things, but she wasn't one of the Phantom Thieves, she didn't have a personal stake in this.

Akira touched her name, brought up the contact. His thumb hovered over the call mark.

But he pressed the back button. It was too late at night. She got up super early in the morning for practice, and he didn't want to break her sleep. He didn't want to burden her, or anyone else. He didn't need help from her or his other friends—it was enough for them just to be there.

If they hadn't been, he'd probably fall apart, though.

Scrolling on up again, Akira hesitated over one other name. _Maruki, Takuto._

Thinking back, he'd never had any real counselling sessions with Maruki. He kind of didn't think Maruki was much of a counsellor at all—he'd clearly stumbled into this job to pay the bills while he did what he really wanted to be doing in his free time.

But maybe Maruki was at just the perfect distance—not too close, not too far, where Akira could say something, get it off his chest. An ear he knew was sympathetic, but not one that relied on him. And not someone whose face he had to see every day.

He pressed _call._ It rang three times. Four. For a second, Akira wondered if maybe Maruki was asleep, and that was just the end of it.

But Maruki answered.

“ _Hello? Kurusu?”_


	4. Three Wishes

_Some time earlier._

Takuto was rather surprised to see Yoshizawa walk into his office after school. He hadn't spoken with her much beyond polite exchanges in the hallways since their session about a year earlier. She seemed like she was managing things well in general, now that she'd taken on a new identity, even if she wasn't quite meeting the expectations of certain school authorities.

“Yoshizawa,” Takuto stood up from his desk, knocked his chair over, righted it, then went over to the sofa, sat down, got up because he'd forgotten to get the snacks, and came back with the snack basket. “Sorry. I feel like I haven't seen you in so long, I should give you a proper welcome,” he said as he set the basket down on the table.

Placing her athletic bag down on the floor beside her, Yoshizawa sat down on the guest sofa, hands on her knees, posture straight. Even her body language was different, now that she had “become” Kasumi. Sumire had avoided eye contact, preferring to look at the floor. It was good to see her happy, now.

“Oh, it's fine,” Yoshizawa waved her hands. “I probably shouldn't be eating junk. ...Not to say your snacks are junk! I mean, they're just not...nutritionally optimal.”

Takuto laughed. “Don't worry, I know it's junk.” He grabbed a wrapped biscuit from the package himself as he took a seat on his padded chair. “What's new with you?”

“Oh, just the usual, I suppose. Training for the upcoming tournament. I'm nervous, but I've been working hard at it. I think I can do well.”

“Is there something else you're worried about, then?” Takuto took a modest nibble of his biscuit. It wouldn't do to have his mouth full while he talked to a student.

Yoshizawa's smile wilted a little, and her head sagged. “I don't know. I suppose it's not really my problem, so I'm not sure if I should be talking to you about it.”

“Hmm,” Takuto brought a hand to his chin, leaning forward thoughtfully. “I think worrying about your friends can count as your own problem. At the very least, your worries are your own.”

She nodded slowly, but she didn't seem quite convinced. She laced her fingers in front of one knee and leaned back, stretching out her arms as she looked at her lap. “Maybe I'm worrying too much, and things aren't as bad as I think they are. I just...” A sigh. “I just wish he would rely on me more, you know? I don't know if it's because I'm younger, or because I'm a girl... It's like...” She laughed awkwardly, rubbing the side of her face. “Like right now, actually. I just talk talk talk my head off while he listens. Maybe I'm the problem.”

Takuto wouldn't call himself particularly sharp in this area, but it seemed to him as if she was talking about the boy she liked. Well, it sounded like she had a pretty mature approach to relationships, for a girl of her age. “I'll tell you a secret about boys, Yoshizawa,” he said with conspiratorial smile. “They spend a lot of energy trying to look cool, and the whole strong and silent thing is a part of that. He wants you to feel like you're relying on him, I guarantee it.”

Yoshizawa didn't seem pleased to hear that, though. “So it is because I'm a girl.” She slumped. “I mean, if it were just little things, I wouldn't mind. It's just...” She looked up, eyes unfocused and looking off somewhere as she bit her lip... “This is too big. There are things that are just too big for one person to carry, aren't there?”

Takuto didn't say anything, just prompted her to continue with a nod and a, “Mm.”

She sighed, then looked back over at him with a weak smile. “I do think he's cool, you know? It's not like I know him super well, but...I see that his friends rely on him, too, and it kind of makes me think, I wish I could be like that...”

“Someone people can rely on?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Maybe it's just because Sumire...” her face clouded a second, and she looked away before her eyes shifted back to Takuto, “because I grew up being an older sister. Well, maybe we were twins, but I felt like the big sister!” She laughed. “I always felt responsible. And now, it's like...” Yoshizawa tilted her head one way, then the other, thinking. “I feel like everyone in my life is there to support me. My family, my coach, the teachers, even Senpai...ah.” Her hand came to her mouth, and she blushed. “Um, anyway. But what am I giving back, really? I've always said that I wanted to take on the world in gymnastics for Sumire, but isn't that just self-satisfaction, in the end? Isn't it just selfishness?”

“I think it's okay to be a little selfish.” Takuto folded his hands and leaned back in his chair. “To have your own goals and passions and follow through with them. That's just being human.”

“Yeah.” Yoshizawa nodded. “That's what I always thought before. But...Senpai...” she said after a moment's hesitation, “He's different. He just has a different air to him, compared to most people. I feel like...he lives for the people around him.”

Takuto had a hunch he knew who she was talking about, though maybe that was his fancy talking. “It sounds like your senpai is a pretty unique person,” Takuto agreed. “But you have your own special qualities. You can just be yourself.”

He said that without thinking, but the moment it was out of his mouth, he realized how absurd it was to say something like that to this girl, of all people.

There were plenty of people in the world for whom “just be yourself” was terrible advice—there were people who were broken in all sorts of ways who would do nothing but hurt themselves and others. On second thought, “just be yourself” was kind of an awful cliche, and here he was, spouting it.

“Hmm...” Yoshizawa's eyes sagged downwards, a gesture that reminded Takuto of the girl she'd once been. How much of her was still Sumire? Though to be precise, she hadn't really _become_ Kasumi. She'd become the person that Sumire believed Kasumi to be—the ideal, with any hidden secrets that Kasumi might have had inside her never coming to the surface. Takuto figured she still had Sumire's insecurities—she just overruled herself with her faith in Kasumi's strength.

Well, this was all just speculation on his part, though. You couldn't get inside her mind. Probably. Though there were other minds that could be gotten into—theoretically. Yes, if you could get into a mind like Yoshizawa's, or even more intriguing, Kurusu's, then what sort of things would you find in there? What could be done there? Takuto had a lot of theories, but not a lot backing it up. In truth, Takuto wanted to interrogate Kurusu about his activities, but he didn't think Kurusu would tell him anything, and it probably wouldn't help their relationship, either.

After a long moment of silence, Takuto snapped himself out of his pondering. Now wasn't the time for that.

Maybe he should try something else, here. “Well, what kind of person would you like to be, if you could just be anyone you wanted?” Once, he was sure she would have answered _Kasumi._ To Sumire, she had been the center of the world. But as the person she was now, perhaps her feelings would have changed.

“Hmm...” Yoshizawa tilted her head again. “I like myself. It's not exactly like I want to be someone else to escape who I am. But it could be interesting to be lots of people, you know? Live all sorts of lives, see new perspectives...” She leaned back into the sofa. “What if I were to be Senpai, and he could be me...or maybe not me, he could be someone else. Would we all make the same decisions?”

“That's a difficult question.” Takuto rubbed his chin. “Arguably, if you're the same person, then you would make the same decisions. But then we run into the problem of what makes you _you._ ” Of course, Takuto had thought over this himself countless times.

Was it memory? Or consciousness? Perhaps for the most enlightened, it was the latter, but the vast majority of people were caught up in the past and would never really escape, their whole lives.

Or maybe identity lay elsewhere—in the minds of others. If everyone treats you like Kasumi Yoshizawa, does that make you Kasumi Yoshizawa?

Takuto didn't really like that idea, giving up control of your identity to the masses. But it had a bitter ring of truth to it. He had changed her perception, but not that of those around her. Ultimately, that change was about her happiness, not about her identity. In order to truly _become_ Kasumi, he figured everyone else would have to think differently of her, as well.

This was all just idle speculation, though. As long as she was happy, none of that really mattered.

“I think maybe...” Yoshizawa looked at him with a smile that was perhaps not entirely Kasumi's, and not entirely Sumire's. “Maybe you are what you do. So I would like to be someone reliable and empathetic, who's always ready to help a friend in need, or anyone who's suffering.” She looked down, blushed, and rubbed the side of her face shyly again before looking back at him with her usual beaming smile. “I guess I do want to be someone like Akira.”

Then she looked down at her phone and jumped. “Oh! I need to be at practice soon.” She hopped up, athletic bag in hand. “But talking really did make me feel better, I feel like I cleared up a lot of thoughts that were all hazy in my mind. So thank you, Mr. Maruki.”

“No problem. Feel free to come down any time,” Takuto got up to show her to the door.

When she left, closing the door behind her, Takuto turned around and stared into thin air a bit as he thought about various things. About Yoshizawa. About Rumi.

About a certain someone who was reliable and empathetic, and always ready to help anyone who was suffering.

x x x

“Takuto Maruki,” Takuto set his driver's license down on the counter at the post office to receive his package.

“Oh! You're Mr. Maruki!” came a startled voice from behind him in line, and Takuto turned around to look.

Blinking through his glasses, Takuto examined the young man standing before him. He could have sworn he'd seen that face before, but he couldn't put his finger on where. The stranger had longish, dyed-brown hair and carried a metallic briefcase in a gloved hand.

“Oh, pardon me,” said the young man, waving his free hand as he smiled apologetically. “I was just so surprised to bump into you here. What a coincidence. Ah.” He reached into the breast pocket of his school uniform and pulled out a card, handing it to Takuto with a polite bow. “Here. I'd appreciate if you didn't say my name out loud, though.”

Takuto looked down at the card. It read, _Goro Akechi, private detective._ “Huh? Is there some problem if I say your name?” he asked, confused.

The young man—Akechi—blinked. “You...don't recognize me? Oh.” An awkward laugh. “Anyway, I've heard about you from a friend...ah, you should probably accept your package.”

Takuto jumped, turned around, and collected his package and started walking away.

“Ah, your ID!” Akechi came running out of the post office after him a minute later, Takuto's driver's license in hand.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Takuto bobbed his head and accepted the card, shifting around the package in his arms to pull out his wallet to tuck the card back in. “I can be a bit forgetful, sometimes.”

“You'd better watch out with that. Not everyone is honest, you know.”

“I know,” Takuto laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. “Wait, so where did you say you'd heard about me? You're not a student from my school, so I don't think I would have met you...?” he trailed off, uncertain. He was forgetful when it came to petty things, but he was pretty good at remembering faces, and he never forgot a student.

“We've never met,” Akechi waved a hand. “I've just heard a lot about you from a friend of mine.”

“Oh, I hope it wasn't all bad.”

“Don't worry, he had nothing but good things to say! ...Actually, if you have a minute, could we go sit down somewhere to chat? I wanted to ask you about some things, and there's a nice cafe just down the street.” The young man pointed with his free hand.

Takuto wasn't in the habit of going to have tea with random strangers, but this seemed like a nice enough kid, and he was in no hurry to be anywhere. There would be no harm in chatting a minute or two. “Sure, lead the way.”

The cafe Akechi led him to was of the classier variety, one that Takuto wouldn't normally spend money on, at a teacher's salary. Buying the cheapest thing on the menu, Takuto took a seat down on the sidewalk seating opposite Akechi. It was starting to get cold at this time of year, but he spent so much time sitting indoors, it was nice to be out sometimes.

“So who was it who's talking about me?” Takuto asked once they were sitting.

“A friend of mine from Shujin,” Akechi said with a nod, taking a sip of coffee. He also had a slice of strawberry cake in front of him which he made sure to photograph before starting to eat, alternately sipping coffee and taking bites of the cake. “Though I'm told you won't be staying there.”

“Ah, yes, it was always just supposed to be a temporary position, unfortunately,” Takuto blew on his tea. Still too hot.

“Do you have any plans for where you'll go next?”

“Hmm, I do have another school counselor position tentatively lined up, but...”

One hand cupped around his mug, Akechi tilted his head thoughtfully. “Oh? I thought for sure you would be pursuing something in research.”

“Research?” Takuto's eyebrows rose.

“Ah, pardon me, weren't you doing some kind of scientific research? Actually, that's the real reason I wanted to talk to you, to be honest. It sounded like fascinating work.”

Akira Kurusu was the only person Takuto had ever spoken to about his research into Cognitive Psience. That had to mean this young man was a friend of his. Kurusu had so many interesting friends.

“Ahh, that.” Takuto looked down at his tea as Akechi nibbled his cake. “I'm not sure if that'll amount to anything.” He looked up at Akechi. “Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm committed to it. I'm not giving up. But it probably won't turn into paid work.”

“What makes you say that?” Akechi's expression was one of polite interest.

“The academic world is harsher than you think,” Takuto said with a wry smile. “If someone up top doesn't like you, or if you don't know the right people, you won't get grants, you won't get positions, you won't get anything.” Warming his hands around his mug, he looked down into his tea.

“You think the research has possibilities, though?”

Takuto looked up again. It was so rare he got the chance to talk about this, his passion project, and he kind of wanted to babble at length, but he restrained himself. “Of course! Just thinking of everything that could be done with it...” He trailed off. He had a doctoral dissertation's worth of thoughts all crowding his brain at once and he didn't even know where to begin.

“Like what, exactly?” Akechi leaned forward slightly, posture communicating interest.

“Well,” Takuto nodded, “Without getting too technical here, if I were to try to boil it down to something simple...” He looked around him for something to use as an example for discussion, and wound up picking the cafe they sat at. “Look at this,” Takuto waved into the cafe where people were sitting, chatting, looking at their phones or reading, enjoying snacks and drinks. “What do you see here?”

Akechi looked puzzled. “A cafe?”

“Describe it more.”

“I mean, there are people sitting here eating and drinking, and two baristas behind the counter...”

“No, no,” Takuto waved his hand. “What if you were inviting a friend here, and you had to describe this place to convince them to come?”

Akechi set down his fork, tilting his head. “I suppose I'd tell him...it's got a nice atmosphere. And I think it would be a pleasant place to chat.”

“That's how you perceive this place,” Takuto nodded. “But what if someone you absolutely loathe came by here on a daily basis?”

“Then I think I'd have to burn this place to the ground,” Akechi laughed, and Takuto chuckled with him.

“You would see this as a completely different place, right? Normally, we can't perceive what other people do. But given the right sort of conditions, it might be possible to do that—or to change someone's perceptions to something else entirely.”

“You're essentially describing a sort of mind-control. I can't say I blame any academics who may have been skeptical.”

“Well, yes. If you want to call it mind-control, that's not far off. But it's worth looking into. Think of the applications.”

“You mean like in criminal justice?” Akechi suggested.

“Huh? No, no,” Takuto waved his hands. That thought hadn't even crossed his mind, though perhaps, given what he understood about the Phantom Thieves, he should have considered that. “In the treatment of mental illness, for example.”

“Ahh,” Akechi nodded, taking another sip of his tea. “I didn't think of that.”

“But I suppose if you're a detective, that would be the first thing that comes to mind... Aren't you still in school, though?” Takuto gestured to his school uniform. “It's got to be exhausting, working while also going to school. And what about entrance exams? I mean, assuming you're going to university. ...Are you in third year? You look about that.”

“Ah,” Akechi's hand on his mug twitched, though his expression remained calm. “Yes, I'm in third year. And I am quite busy. I confess, I haven't really been thinking about entrance exams.”

Takuto didn't consider himself terribly good at his job or very perceptive in general, but he had spent the last couple years talking to literally hundreds of teenagers about their problems, and sheer force of numbers had given him a minimal sort of intuition about kids. And one thing that he knew is that “I'm not thinking about entrance exams” was generally a big red flag. All high school kids thought about entrance exams. And Akechi's uniform announced at a glance that he went to a good school, a university-oriented one. By this time of year, most third years would be starting to retire from their clubs to study full-time.

“Why not?”

“I just have a lot going on right now.” Akechi smiled.

“Like what?” Takuto pressed.

“Mostly work, some television appearances.”

That explained why his face had seemed familiar. “It's fantastic to be working at your age, but there's no need to be in a rush to get somewhere. You can take some time to enjoy school and time with friends.”

“...I prefer to use my time efficiently,” Akechi toyed with his coffee mug, tilting it to look down at the cooling liquid inside. “I don't want to waste it.”

“You feel like you don't have enough time?”

“Yes, I'd say I wish I had more time.” Akechi's eyes were still down on his mug. “Who really has enough hours in the day? And nobody really knows how much time they have.” There was something odd about the way he sad that, but Takuto couldn't quite put his finger on what.

“Well, that's perception, too, if you don't mind me talking about that again,” Takuto said. “When you're doing something miserable, time seems to drag out forever. On the other hand, when you're with company you enjoy, the time just seems to fly by, and there's never enough. Is there anyone like that in your life?”

Akechi looked up, eyes widening just slightly, and then back down at his mug. Strangely, he seemed a little sad when he answered, “Yes, I suppose there is.”

“I think spending time with those people might be the most important thing in life, but well, that's me,” Takuto finished off his tea and leaned back in his chair. “When you're young, nothing seems as important as your career...but your career won't love you back.” He blew out a long, exhausted sigh. “Sorry, now I'm lecturing. I can't turn off counselor mode, it seems.”

“Oh no, it's fine,” Akechi waved his hands with a broad smile. “That's a very legitimate view.”

Takuto smiled wryly. “I don't expect you to agree, though.”

“Aha, you could tell?” The smile never left Akechi's face. “I believe a fulfilling mission can be enough for some people. And my work is very meaningful to me.”

“Well, I can't criticize you for that. Oh no, in fact, I agree.”

Akechi cocked his head. “It sounds like you're contradicting yourself.”

“Oh, I am, aren't I? Well, sometimes, contradictions are inevitable...”

Akechi glanced at his phone then, and with an apologetic smile, said, “I'm sorry this is rather sudden, but speaking of time, there's somewhere I need to be, soon.”

“Ah, of course. Looks like we're both done our drinks, anyway,” Takuto nodded and got out of his seat. “It was nice talking to you. ...Sorry I lost you your place in line, though.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?” Akechi asked as he slid his chair back in.

“At the post office. I think it's closed, now...”

“Ah, don't worry about that,” Akechi waved a hand. “I already got what I came for.”

x x x

_The present._

Takuto rolled over in bed, hand groping on his nightstand for his ringing phone. Pulling it off the charging cable, he opened it up, squinted at the screen without his glasses, saw the call was from... _Akira Kurusu?_

“Hello? Kurusu?” he said, blearily. He didn't feel like he'd been sleeping for long. Maybe it was midnight or something.

“Mr. Maruki?” came the voice on the other end.

“Mm.” Takuto rubbed his eyes and sat up. “What is it?”

Kurusu didn't answer for a long moment. “...Sorry for calling so late.” His voice was particularly quiet.

“No, it's okay. You're not someone who would call for no reason. And you've helped me quite a bit, I can return the favor.”

“Yeah...” Kurusu trailed off into a long silence. “It's not like a need a favor.”

When he didn't continue, Takuto asked, “Did something happen?”

“...Yeah. Someone...died.”

Now Takuto was awake. “Did it have something to do with...”

“...Uh-huh.”

Takuto blew out a heavy sigh. He'd known that kid was in deep, but now it was finally hitting just how deep. He didn't need a listening ear. He needed backup.

Well, it was the least he could do to take Kurusu's midnight phone call. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Kurusu gave him a very vague description of events that omitted names, places, and pretty much any form of concrete noun. Well, fair enough. But it was upsetting and frustrating to have a teenager trying to protect him.

Takuto had heard a lot of miserable stories in his time as a counselor. If there was one thing he'd learned, it was that there was a staggering amount of pain out there, and everybody was hiding something. Everyone just put on the appearance of looking fine, but the world was filled with sob story after sob story after sob story. Kurusu's story had a lot of fantastical elements, but at the root, it was a tale that Takuto had heard a million times. And it never got any easier.

Victim of horrific abuse leads lifestyle of destruction to himself and others, then kills himself. And Kurusu blamed himself for it.

“It's not your fault,” Takuto told him, knowing that Kurusu wouldn't believe it. None of them ever did. Maybe Takuto just wasn't very convincing as a counselor—maybe it was too obvious that he was a hypocrite, in that area.

Damn straight, Takuto blamed himself. Every time.

Kurusu didn't directly answer his statement. He was just silent for a moment, then moved on. “And it's not like I can talk to my friends about it, since to them...I mean, I don't think they want to hear about my broken heart over their parents' murderer. ...Are you grossed out that I did it with a guy? It's fine if you are, whatever,” Kurusu said, but that sounded very much like teenage boy bravado to Takuto.

“It's not gross. It's perfectly natural to fall in love with someone.” Takuto was just a little surprised. He'd thought for sure Kurusu had something going on with Yoshizawa, but maybe not. Teen drama could get complicated like that.

“Not with him...” Kurusu laughed, but it sounded bitter. “Near the end, he said—he wished we could have met earlier.” Kurusu's voice was soft, and slightly hoarse. He sounded like he'd been crying. “I can't stop thinking about what if, what if I'd met him even a year earlier, before all this started...”

“Wouldn't it be nice if we could change the past like that...”

“I know it's stupid to think about. It's pointless. Nothing is bringing Akechi back.”

“Akechi?” Takuto said, startled. “Wait...”

“Ah...don't tell anyone about that, okay?” A sigh. “I'm sorry, I've been talking a long time. I'll let you sleep. Good night. ...And thank you.” And then he hung up extremely suddenly.

Takuto stared at his phone a bit, processing everything Kurusu had said.

He thought back on the conversations he'd had with Kurusu, with his friends. With Yoshizawa. And with Goro Akechi.

Were those kids going to be okay?

Turning on the news these days, it sort of seemed like things were getting dire. For a minute there, he'd thought Kurusu was dead, and now someone else really was dead.

Not for the first time, Takuto felt hopelessly frustrated at his own helplessness, his inability to do anything at all.

Takuto rolled out of bed and switched on the bedside lamp. It was clear he wasn't going to be getting any sleep that night.


	5. The First Inevitability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P-please don't think too hard about this premise and exactly how much Maruki has control over, look, once shit starts involving gods and time travel and alternate timelines and warping the fabric of reality and stuff, like, I think we can all agree that what happens is whatever is convenient for the plot to happen. I am sure there are like a million plot holes here, but shhhh. I'll do my best to handwave as much as possible later, ok.

Something was different.

Akira turned around and looked behind him, but only saw the same busy Tokyo streets. It was a little chillier here in spring than it had been back home, and the wind particularly was strong that day, blowing his hair into his eyes.

He'd decided to wander a bit after school instead of hanging out with friends, exploring the city that was still new to him, and he'd wound up somewhere he didn't recognize. He was probably just a little lost.

Figuring it was just his imagination, Akira turned back, and something strange caught his eye.

He wasn't sure at first, but when the crowds parted, he got a good look at what looked like some kind of cosplayer. Only—this was nowhere near Akihabara or Harajuku. It was strange for someone to be dressed up around here. And the figure was approaching him.

Akira started walking, and he noticed something strange. Nobody around him was staring at the cosplayer. With a getup like that, usually you'd attract attention, but it was like nobody even noticed. The cosplayer was rudely cutting his way through the crowds, and the people just sort of slid out of the way to let him by, as if it wasn't even their intention—and coming closer, it was apparent that this figure was male—he had this fairly outrageous black-and-gray striped getup and a mask like something out of a tokusatsu show as he strode down the street like he was headed somewhere in a hurry.

Akira didn't even have time to react. The cosplayer went right on past him like he wasn't even there. After he passed, Akira turned around, watching him grow distant, then disappear into the crowds.

Akira stood there for a while, looking where the cosplayer had gone, then up at the sky, then at the street around him. Something about the air here was different.

It was probably just smog.

Shaking his head, Akira turned around and continued on his way.

x x x

Akira was waiting by one of the pillar advertisements at Shinjuku station. He pulled out his phone and typed, **I'm by the west gate** , and got a quick reply.

**Coming!**

If he told his friends about this, they'd definitely be impressed, like _dude, it's barely May and you already got a date with a famous hottie! Way to go!_ But Akira didn't really consider it a date, and he would never kiss and tell.

She was a third year at the middle school associated with the high school Akira had enrolled in that spring. It was basically an escalator school, and the middle and high schools were located right next to each other.

She often ate lunch out in the shared courtyard with her sister, where Akira had approached them. When he'd seen her do casually do a perfect backflip out on the grass, he'd come over to compliment her, which had led to eating lunch together a few more times, the three of them, and well, that had led to this.

When Akira's parents had promised him that he could go to school in Tokyo if he got into one of a list of top prestigious academies, they probably hadn't been expecting that Akira would actually make it into one. His grades had always been mediocre—he didn't see the point in trying any harder than necessary, when it came to school. But he wanted to live on his own in Tokyo, so he'd studied his ass off to pass the entrance exams for a rather exclusive high school.

It wasn't that he disliked his parents, or that he really wanted to go to a great school. He just wanted to be on his own in the big city.

“There you are!”

At that voice, Akira looked up to see a familiar smiling face. “Kasumi.” Noticing another figure behind her, he saw her sister had come with her, too. “Oh, Sumire. So you are coming?”

“No.” Her voice was so quiet it was barely audible, and she shook her head without meeting his eyes. “I just came to walk Kasumi to the station. Bye.” And then she walked off before Akira could stop her.

“Sumire!” Kasumi called after her, but either she didn't hear, or she was pretending she didn't hear, as she vanished into the crowd. With a sigh, Kasumi turned back to Akira. “I tried.”

Akira would be lying if he said he wasn't happy about this. Not that he disliked Sumire's company—well, there wasn't much to dislike, she hardly talked—but he did kind of want to be alone with Kasumi. Sumire was clearly perceptive enough to realize that and show consideration.

“Her choice,” Akira said with a shrug, and the two of them headed out of the station.

The pretense for this outing had been to go check out a new floor that had opened up in a popular mall, but they took their time wandering around on the way there, looking at storefronts, chatting about school and other things. Akira mostly listened—there wasn't anything to talk about, when it came to himself, and other people were always more interesting. He privately thought of himself as something of a connoisseur of people, and he always sought out new flavors, and Kasumi was like...a particularly tart orange. Akira spent a lot of time seeking out new people, getting to know them, looking for those who would catch his attention. And Kasumi caught it. Maybe it was because she was driven—Akira liked that in a girl.

“Hey, what do you think of this?” Kasumi was picking something up off the shelf to show Akira—a pair of glasses frames. “Don't you think you'd look good with glasses?” she began.

“I don't need them, though...” Akira was turning around to look look when something happened.

He wasn't sure what he could call it. It was like the whole world around him roiled, and all he could see was Kasumi's hand in front of him holding that pair of glasses frames as the air rippled between them.

“...Akira?”

His vision blurred, then cleared again, and he looked at Kasumi standing in front of him, still holding the mug. Her eyes were wide, but she wasn't looking at him—she was looking over his shoulder.

Akira spun around and saw he was standing on a wooden scaffolding, while a deep, cavernous pit lay below them.

“What's going on...?” Kasumi murmured, eyes still widened in shock.

“It looks like...a mine?” Akira said as he gazed out over the pit. Various figures that looked like people were coming in and out of holes in the earth around, and there were some trolleys on tracks puttering around, too.

Akira looked up, and saw they were just somewhat lower than ground level. Behind them was a tunnel that went deep into the earth.

“You see it too, right? I'm not crazy?” Kasumi muttered.

“You're not crazy,” Akira agreed, and he was opening his mouth to say something else when someone came out from the tunnel behind them. Or maybe it would be better to say _something._ At a glance, the figure looked like a mining supervisor, but his face was covered with a mask, and there was something...vague and undefined about its figure, almost as if it were liquid.

“Hey, you!” The figure called out. “What the hell are you doing? Get back to work!”

Later, the memories of this whole scene basically just became a blur. Akira didn't remember the monsters he fought then, just that more appeared—the only things that were clear in his mind were that a creature had awakened inside him, and that Kasumi was gone. She'd run—kicking away the monster that had a grip on her, she'd bolted off deep into the mine tunnel, and Akira hadn't followed, thinking since now he had these newfound powers, he would fight the monsters while she got away.

After the fight was over and the monsters melted into goo, Akira went down the tunnel the way she had run, but he quickly found that it was a maze in here, and he had no idea where she was, or even where he was. He tried calling her phone, but nothing on his phone worked except for this app with a weird eyeball shaped icon. He didn't see any more monsters nearby, but that didn't mean there weren't any.

Feeling strangely exhausted, Akira sat down against the dirt wall of the tunnel and looked at the red gloves that had appeared on his hands, trying to think of what to do. They said when you were lost, you should stay put, and he was getting the feeling that he was making it harder for Kasumi to find him again. So then should he stay here? He was really too tired to think.

He honestly believed she would be okay. She was in far better shape than he was, and she could outrun just about anyone—so he was worried, but not panicking. He just needed to spend a moment gathering his wits.

So much had happened all at once, when a white-clad, caped prince with a plague mask approached him, all Akira could do was just take it in stride. He didn't even have the energy to be shocked anymore. He just raised a hand to wave.

The white-clad prince approached him with careful steps, stopping a good four meters or so away before he spoke. “Who are you?” he asked. His tone was cold and neutral.

“Who are you?” Akira shot back.

“Answer my question.” The white-clad prince's hand went to his hip, to the hilt of a glowing sword.

“I'm way too tired for another fight,” Akira said with a sigh. “It'd be nice if you could tell me what the hell is going on, though. Or if you've seen a girl with a ponytail around here. We got split up.”

The prince was still a moment, and then his hand dropped from hip, his stance relaxing. But he didn't come any closer. “How did you get in here?”

“Huh?” Akira tilted his head up at the stranger, sliding his mask up to the top of his head so he could have an unobstructed view. “Hell if I know. I was in the mall with a friend, and then suddenly, I was here, and now I'm dressed like this,” he waved his hands at himself.

“...So this is new for you, hmm?” The prince looked thoughtful, leaning his weight on one leg. Then after a moment of considering, he approached Akira, reaching out his hand. “Come on. Let's get you out of here, then.”

Akira took his hand, stumbling a bit as the prince pulled him up, but he managed to get to his feet. “Sorry. I'm just...suddenly really tired.”

Releasing his hand, the prince stepped back to examine him again. “It seems you're telling the truth. I never thought there would be another...” he murmured, as if he were talking to himself.

“A friend of mine is in here,” Akira said after he'd gotten steady on his feet. “She ran away when we got attacked.”

The stranger followed what he was saying without him asking, nodding immediately. “I'll help you find her, then. We shouldn't waste time. The shadows here are very aggressive. Can you keep up, though?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine,” Akira nodded. His exhaustion wasn't physical, really, it was a weird sort of head thing—he could force his body to move on auto-pilot.

They wove their way through mazes of tunnels, which miraculously, the stranger seemed to know his way around, and whenever monsters—shadows, rather—appeared, the stranger would first wait to see if he could overhear any conversation between them, and when necessary, he would dispose of them with a persona like a muscular archer. Akira joined in fights, but he honestly couldn't even compare to the stranger when it came to ability. This guy was clearly experienced.

The stranger traced back where they had come from, and then with the information they'd gleaned from shadows, they headed down the route it seemed Kasumi had taken—or rather, been taken. According to the shadows, she'd been caught. Akira gnawed on the inside of his lip, thinking about what might have happened.

But they came to a dead end in front of what seemed to be a mine elevator that went deep into the earth. The elevator seemed to be parked at the bottom, and there was no way of bringing it back up.

“You sure she's down there?”

“Shadows are stupidly honest, it's part of how the whole thing works,” the stranger said as he gazed down into the blackness of the pit. “They said she's down here, so she's down here.”

Akira was inclined to trust his words—mostly because he had nothing else to go off. “...Rope?” Akira suggested, but the stranger shook his head.

“Too dangerous. What we need to do is leave and come back.” He started walking away, but turned back when it was apparent Akira wasn't following.

“I can't leave Kasumi behind.”

“You can't help her like this.” The prince was entirely calm about this. Well, she was a stranger to him—Akira couldn't expect him to be upset. But he seemed quite unperturbed about the whole situation, in general. It was like this was normal for him. “We can leave and be back within the hour. I'll explain on the way.”

He started walking again, and Akira had no choice but to follow.

x x x

As the prince led him up the winding path out of the pit, he explained about where they were—that this was another world that represented the subconscious of a twisted individual, and that it was guarded by shadows and ruled by the a shadow version of that person's mind.

When they came out above ground, Akira saw around them was the perfectly normal Tokyo city—except here and there was dotted with similar-looking mine pits. The mall he had Kasumi had just been visiting was one of such pits. The prince yanked Akira into a spot that was out of view, then drew out his phone and tapped it, the world rippled around them, and in a heartbeat, everything was normal again, but now it was nighttime. The sudden change was disorienting.

Now, instead of a white-clad prince standing before Akira, there was a rather pretty boy wearing the same school uniform as Akira. His face looked somewhat familiar. Had Akira seen him in the halls?

“All right, let's go,” said the boy started off down the sidewalk, circling around the mall.

“Akira!” Surprised to hear his name, Akira turned around to see Sumire running up to him.

“What are you doing here?” Akira asked her.

“What am I doing here?” She seemed confused. “What are _you_ doing here? It's past midnight, and I came looking for Kasumi, because she wasn't answering her phone, and neither were you, and I knew you guys were coming here, so I figured I'd check out the mall...” That monologue was probably the most words Akira had ever heard out of Sumire at once. She was clearly worried about her sister.

Akira pulled out his phone and realized that she was right. Down inside the mine, he'd totally lost sense of the passage of time.

Staring at his phone, he realized he had absolutely no idea how to explain this to Sumire. Should he tell her the truth? But she wouldn't believe him, would she?

Akira was saved from this dilemma by the stranger stepping forward to cover for him. “Akira was just saying that she said she was going to the bathroom and never came back. He was worried, so he called me up to help look for her.”

The way the stranger spoke was oddly jarring. Like, his tone of voice was different, pitched higher than before, and gentler, his expression one of concern. Not like Akira had ever seen his face when they had been in mine, but back then, he'd seemed...cold, brisk, all business. Akira had appreciated it, since they didn't have the time for anything else, but now, it was like he was another person.

“Huh?!” Sumire looked shocked. “So then...something did happen?”

Akira just nodded and decided to let the stranger do the talking. It felt strange to hear him say _Akira,_ too—he realized that with all that had gone on, he'd never actually introduced himself, and that he didn't even know the stranger's name, either.

“Yes,” the stranger nodded. “I've been asking around the area, and we have a couple leads, but—time is of the essence for cases like this, so I really don't have time to explain.” He just pulled a card out of his blazer pocket and handed it to Sumire. “I'm a detective. I need you to go to the Parco to the south of here and let me know if you see any suspicious-looking men, especially one with bleach-blond hair and a scar on his cheek. We're checking the underground parking lot here. Come on, Akira.” And then he grabbed Akira's arm and dragged him along. Akira looked back once to see Sumire standing there, card in hand, looking stunned.

Once they were out of earshot, Akira said, “...How much of that was true?”

“None of it, obviously,” replied the stranger. “I just need her to not be around when we go back into the other world. ...I am a detective, though.”

“You're a great liar.”

“Aha, is that a compliment? Thank you,” The stranger said without turning around. “Comes with the territory.”

“Being a detective?”

The stranger didn't answer that. “We are actually going to the underground parking lot. If we enter from there, we should appear lower-down...though I can't guarantee our exact location.”

That sounded ominous, but Akira was willing to take a risk here. He was kind of pinning everything on what this stranger said—it wasn't like he had a choice. “All right. I trust you.”

Akira thought he saw the stranger's shoulders twitch, but that might have been his imagination. Then the stranger seemed to realize he was still holding Akira's wrist, and dropped it.

The underground parking lot was closed at this hour, but that just meant you couldn't drive in—a couple of pedestrians could just walk right over the barricade and go in. The stranger pulled out his phone, tapped something, and then the world melted around them, and they were underground again, at the end of a long tunnel. The stranger was wearing that white prince outfit and bird-looking mask, and when Akira patted himself, he found he was wearing that silly (but cool) black jacket and white mask again.

“Is there a reason we get costumes?” Akira asked the stranger he started off again, and Akira followed after him.

“A manifestation of the facade you want to project to the world. I assume,” the stranger answered as he strode along, attention ahead of him for incoming shadows.

“You assume?”

“...I've never met anyone else with this power before.”

“...Hmm.” It would probably be better to talk about this later.

They went through more winding tunnels than Akira could possibly keep track of, but the stranger seemed to know where he was going. “Have you been here before?” Akira asked him after they cleaned up some shadows.

“I've been in here every day all month, trying to get through this place.”

“Get through here to get to what?”

“I think...you'll see soon enough.”

Akira didn't reply.

Eventually, they went down an elevator that lead even deeper, and when they got off, Akira could see a large, cavernous room ahead.

The stranger stopped him as they were stepping out of the elevator. “I think...what we're both looking for is in that big cavern. There's going to be a very powerful shadow there. Let me fight it. Just stay out of the line of fire, grab your girlfriend and get out.”

“...You want me to just leave you here?”

The stranger's incredulous look was obvious, even through his mask. “Do you think you can help?” His tone was oozing scorn. “I know what I'm doing. Just don't get in my way. Then are you ready?”

There was only one thing Akira could possibly answer. “I'm ready.”

“Then let's go.” Glowing sword in hand, the stranger stepped off the elevator and into the dark hall toward the cavern.

x x x

The sight that greeted them in the large cavern was far beyond what Akira could have expected. The whole cavern was full of gold—not bars, but raw ore piled up around every wall. Reclining on a stack of gold was a hulking brute of a man dressed like a miner—if miners wore gold-plated everything. And frankly, he looked more like something out of a certain block-based computer game than anything close to historically accurate.

“You! The intruder! Come to steal my gold, huh?” The gold-plated miner stepped forward.

The prince strode forward to meet him without a word.

Akira cast around, looking for Kasumi, and found her lying off to the side, sprawled out on a pile of gold ore. “Kasumi!” He ran toward her, kneeling down by her side, then froze. Reached out, laying two fingers against her neck.

“Oh, don't bother, the girl's already dead,” the golden miner said carelessly, as if he were talking about what he'd eaten for breakfast. “That's the thing about getting thugs to do work for you, they just have no delicacy. I never told them to kill, they just have no self-control.”

The prince struck without warning.

He went straight for the neck, but before his sword could connect, the golden miner's body rippled, swelling to something twice, three times its size, becoming a great, golden bull.

Akira knelt there, cradling Kasumi's body in his arms. Now that he was holding her, it was quite apparent in which parts she was bent the wrong way, and he could feel the blood soaking through the back of her blouse onto his pants. She was still warm.

But Akira wasn't looking at her. His eyes were on the fight, the prince battling the golden bull. It all seemed so unreal, he couldn't quite absorb it. Kasumi was dead. And the boy dressed as a prince he'd met only a few hours ago was battling a gigantic, golden bull in this massive underground cavern full of gold.

And the prince was struggling.

Akira wasn't sure how long he watched—probably, it wasn't very long at all—but when the prince yelled, “I told you to get the fuck out of here!” his rough, slightly wild tone made Akira snap out of it.

Akira got to his feet. “I'm not leaving.” And then before the prince could protest, he ripped off his own mask and joined in the fight.

He hadn't been sure if he'd be useful at all—it had probably been an absolutely reckless thing to do, really—but somehow, the spells his persona cast seemed hit the shadow particularly hard, and the two of them managed to beat it down, collapsing back into its human-like form.

Now on its knees, the shrunken shadow groveled in front of them, begging for mercy. The prince drew a gun—it almost looked like a toy, but Akira could tell at a glance that it worked—and pointed it at the shadow's head.

“Wait,” Akira said, throwing a hand out to stop him.

“What?” The prince lowered the gun slightly. “Please don't tell me you want to show mercy _now_.”

“No.” Akira shook his head, and held out his hand. He looked the prince in the eye. “I want to do it.”

The prince gave him a long, hard stare. “As I've explained to you, this shadow is the manifestation of the mind of someone in our world. If you destroy his mind, what do you think will happen, Akira?”

It made Akira feel so strange to hear this person say his name. It sounded...not right on his lips. “...I figured that out. Give me the gun.”

The prince paused a long moment, both of them ignoring the begging and slobbering from the shadow at their feet. “I wasn't the one to kill the girl,” he moaned, “Believe me, believe me.”

After that long moment of hesitation, the prince handed over the gun. Akira took it. It felt surprisingly heavy.

“Those 'thugs' he was talking about...” Akira turned the gun over in his hands. “Do they correspond to something in the real world?”

The prince nodded. “I believe so. My investigations have revealed he has connections with organized crime, though officially speaking, his hands are clean. You just pay them to do your dirty work, huh?” The prince casually kicked the blubbering shadow in the face.

“Sounds like he won't be missed.” Akira pointed the gun at the shadow. “And besides, you were going to do this anyway, weren't you.” Akira looked at the prince's face, and got all the answer he needed there.

He fired.


	6. An Immodest Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shamelessly stole the headcanon about Akechi being a Yukari fanboy from hydrangeatattoo. Go read Dangerous Liaisons right now, by the way. I compel thee: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669843
> 
> I know I've totally written Akira cleaning Akechi's apartment before, and I will shamelessly write it again. I maintain that Akechi is secretly a slob, while Akira prefers to keep things tidy (maybe it's just Morgana beating those habits into him). Idk, maybe I just have a thing for househusband!Akira making curry and coffee in hadaka apron waiting for his man to come home from work so he can give him a fresh serving of the D. Househusband!Akira is the darling of the neighborhood association and all the housewives love him, making salaryman!Goro wildly jealous, and when he comes back home from a hard night of unpaid overtime at Shido Inc and sees the neighborhood flyer on the table has a picture of Akira surrounded by hot young housewives, and does one of them have her hand on his ass?! Akechi tosses his briefcase down, loosens his tie with a yank and...
> 
> Ahem, back to our regular programming.

When they finally came out of the crumbling otherworldly mine, it was after last train.

“I'll just go wait at the station until morning,” Akira said, but stumbled after a few steps, and he would have landed on his face if the stranger hadn't grabbed his arm and wrenched him up again.

“What are you, a drunk salaryman? We'll take a cab,” the stranger said with an aggrieved sigh, and he half-dragged half-carried Akira around to the cab stop about a block away where cabs were lined up and waiting for stragglers like them.

After the stranger shoved him into the cab, Akira slumped back into the seat a moment before he realized he should check his phone, and pulled it out. Three missed calls from Sumire, and a bunch of texts. He didn't want to look at them right now. Stuffing his phone back in his pocket, he dropped his head against the backseat headrest and closed his eyes.

“Where do you live?” the stranger turned to ask him. But Akira was already asleep.

x x x

Akira woke up in a strange bed.

This was certainly something he'd fantasized about, but he'd never actually done. Well, all his escapades had been in dark corners at school or in parks at night and stuff—love hotels were expensive! He had yet to actually take anyone back to his new apartment, but the fact that he had privacy now had definitely been on his mind.

Did he know anyone who had their own place? And man, he felt sore as hell, but he'd generally imagined himself doing most of the damage in such an encounter, though he wasn't averse to other possibilities, depending on the person...

Wrenching his brain away from that train of thought, Akira rolled over, throwing off the blankets, and found himself fully clothed in a crumpled school uniform. So no, apparently not the kind of night he'd been hoping for. Sitting up, he examined the room around him.

It was kind of a disaster zone.

First of all, these sheets had clearly not been washed in weeks. Second of all, there were clothes everywhere. Third of all, there was this desk in the corner with just like...stacks of random shit on it. Bits of wire and string, buttons, stuff that looked like animal scales or scraps of leather? And tossed to the side of the desk were about six different toy swords and guns, a plastic bucket with a length of rope in it, a scrunched-up plastic tarp—the list went on.

Getting out of the bed, as Akira slowly absorbed the foreground, the background came into clarity. The furniture was the nice but bland sort that made Akira think the apartment had come furnished. The floor was very unswept, but also nice hardwood. The walls were bare, with no posters or anything for decoration. It wasn't very homey.

Akira pushed open the bedroom door with a “Hello?” But got no response. Looking down the hall, he found what seemed to be the bathroom, and there, he was greeted with an even more gruesome scene.

Bandages and gauze caked with old blood hung half-out of the trash can, and there were dried brown drips on the tile that looked like blood, too. The bathroom counter was a mess of various first-aid items, some fresh, some used, plus extremely suspicious-looking pills, ointments, and liquid medication. Opening up the bathroom cabinet, he saw even more suspicious-looking drugs. They were labeled things like, “Tanaka's 100% Miracle Cure!” and “Pain B Gone!” Some were of the more modern-looking variety, while others were more in the Chinese medicine direction, and all of it looked of dubious efficacy and possibly legality. But then next to those were legitimate-looking drugs with chemical names that Akira couldn't pronounce or recognize that seemed to have been prescribed by a real doctor.

Akira closed the cabinet and decided to pee.

Done his business, he wandered into the kitchen living-room area. It was an 1LDK, and quite a bit larger than Akira's own 1R. The kitchen counter was covered in empty noodle cups, the detritus of convenience store bentos, and empty little bottles of those 24-hour energy drinks. He didn't even want to look at the fridge.

There was a sofa in the living-dining area, but it didn't look like anyone ever sat on it. A collection of dress shirts, sweater vests, and slacks hung over the back, and all the seating area was covered in books and papers. The coffee table in front of it was stacked with more books, plus a laptop that looked fairly new. Wandering over, Akira picked up a few books, scanning titles. A lot were were typical high school fare—textbooks, reference books and problem collections—while the rest was in a decidedly more pretentious direction _._ German philosophers, Russian literary giants, classics of Japanese literature. The bookshelf had more books, haphazardly stacked in no particular order, plus a few _Featherman_ figures, of all things, and a photo of the boy Akira had met last night smiling together with a woman Akira recognized as an actress who was starring in the current Featherman run. It was autographed, with the message, _“It was great to meet you, Goro!”_

“Goro, huh...” Akira muttered as he idly picked up a random book, flipped through it, read, _I thought, as long as I can make them laugh, it doesn't matter how, I'll be all right. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won't mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky._

“What am I doing...” Akira muttered. He snapped the book shut. He'd always kind of hated Dazai.

With a sigh, Akira dug into his pants and found his phone was still there, but it was out of juice. He cast around for a wall clock and saw it was 11AM.

“...Shit.” He was beyond late for school. He looked around, went back to the bedroom and found his uniform blazer, and his shoes were tossed carelessly by the door. He looked down at himself. He looked like he'd fallen asleep in his clothes, but there was really no helping that. Should he just go home first, if he was this late already? Maybe he should just fake sick.

...Maybe he _should_ just fake sick. Nodding to himself, Akira went back to the bedroom and found a charger for his phone (they thankfully used the same kind of cable) and planning to call school once it was charged enough, he turned to look at the apartment in front of him.

...Well, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

x x x

The front door didn't open until quite late that night. Akira heard the sound of the door closing, and then silence. Curious, he turned around from his seat on the couch to see the boy from last night—Goro—with his shoes still on, crouched in a low stance, sliding into the living room with a goddamn utility knife in his hand. When Goro saw Akira, he heaved a big sigh, relaxed, and tossed the knife over onto the kitchen counter.

“Why are you still here? And what did you do to my apartment?”

Akira, who was lying on the couch with a book in hand, turned back to the book. “Decided to take a sick day. Cleaned it.”

“You can leave now.” Goro went back to the door to take off his shoes, then came back with a metallic briefcase in hand.

“I want to talk to you about things, though, and I don't have your number. I figured it'd be easiest for me just to wait until you got back.”

Circling the couch, Goro set his briefcase down beside the coffee table and observed the state of affairs. He looked at Akira reclining on the couch like he owned the place, then reached down to yank _The Phenomenology of Spirit_ out of Akira's hands. Akira let him take it.

“It was incomprehensible anyway.” Akira look up at him nonchalantly.

Goro scowled at him a moment, snapping the book shut. “I suppose if can't be helped if you have difficulty with this sort of thing,” he said, leaving it on the coffee table instead of putting it away on the bookshelf. “Fine then. I wanted to talk to you, too. But please don't touch my things ever again.”

Now that they were no longer in a rush, Akira was free to take a good look at the boy whose apartment he'd just crashed at. Seeing him now, Akira wouldn't have minded if he'd woken up in his bed naked. This guy was shockingly good-looking, and clearly put effort into maintaining it. His hair was freshly-trimmed and meticulously styled, his clothes looked expensive and actually tailored, and Akira had seen concealer in his bathroom, too. His clothing suggested a lean and tight frame, and Akira found his eyes travelling up and down Goro's body while he wasn't looking.

Akira had only ever gotten with a guy once before, though, and he was decidedly more hesitant with men. It was just...more complicated. It was easier to date girls.

He would just have to try his best not to ogle this guy.

Goro peeled off his blazer and tossed it over the back of the couch, tugging at his uniform tie to loosen it. It looked like he was fully ready to make a new mess, here.

“Don't worry, I didn't touch the porno mags under the bed,” Akira said dryly as he sat up on the couch.

That didn't work on Goro, however. “What decade are you from? All my porn is on my computer.”

“Yeah, your browser history was pretty interesting, all right.”

Goro rolled his eyes. “My laptop is password-locked.”

“Come on, you're obviously a _Featherman_ fanboy, it wasn't that hard to guess.”

Goro froze a split second there, eyes widening, and Akira broke into a grin.

“Ohh, so the password is _Featherman-_ related? Hmm...”

Goro sighed, circling the coffee table to flop himself down on the other end of the sofa. “My last one was. I change it regularly. But nice try.”

Akira turned in his seat, leaning back to cross one leg over the other. “Just wanted to see if I could get to you, Goro Akechi.”

Goro's eyelids twitched. “It seems we've both been snooping, then, Akira Kurusu.” Leaning back against his side of the couch, putting a clear distance between himself and Akira, he continued. “First year, applied from a middle school outside of Tokyo. You live alone. Average grades, no clubs, generally unremarked-on by teachers, fairly popular among your peers. No dirt, as far as I can tell. Absolutely nothing exceptional about you.”

This entire description of him sounded like an insult, somehow. What the hell did this guy know? “Were you expecting dirt?”

“It would have been a bit more exciting,” Goro said, as if he were trying to bait him. “I thought that someone else who had this power would be a little more...special.”

Akira folded his arms. “A little more _deserving,_ you mean?”

“Well, I wasn't going to put it that way. But yes. Why you, of all people?”

“Why _you,_ of all people?” Akira shot back.

Goro smirked, but his eyes were unreadable. “Why not me? I'm model student at the top of my class, charming, good-looking, well-read, athletic and multi-talented.”

“And modest, too.”

Goro's smirk gave way to awkwardness. “...I usually am, to others. It's strange. I feel like I can be honest with you. It's like we share a strange connection. ...Well, I suppose we do. For whatever reason.”

It was a weird thing to say to a guy you'd just met the day before, but Akira felt the same way. The real reason he'd stuck around in this guy's apartment and faked sick was that he had the intense feeling like he couldn't let his chance to see Goro again slip through his fingers. His desperation about it was sudden and confusing. Maybe it was normal, after everything that had happened the previous day. But Akira felt embarrassed about it now, and he didn't want to admit anything—he just felt crazy.

So instead, Akira just got to the point. “You said you wanted to talk.”

“Yes,” Goro nodded, “I wanted to ask you what you plan to do. About your abilities, I mean.”

“What do I plan to do?”

“I mean, it's the obvious question, right?” Goro leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and laced his fingers together. Akira remembered, rather trivially, that he'd been wearing gloves the previous night, and now his fingers were bare. They were long, with well-groomed nails, and Akira couldn't help but be drawn to them. “For whatever reason, you've acquired a mysterious power. So will you make use of it, or not?”

Akira's mind had been dancing around this thought, avoiding it, all day. He didn't want to think about what had happened to Kasumi or what he would say to Sumire, and he didn't really want to think about what would become of the man whose shadow he had shot. It was easier to wonder about what Goro had in his bathroom cabinet than it was to chase those kinds of thoughts around his head.

“Why don't you tell me what you do with it?” Akira said, avoiding the question for now.

“Well, I'm sure you have an idea of it.” Goro explained in a bit more detail about the other world, about shadows, and about how he tracked them down. “Basically, I solve problems.”

“That's one way to put it, all right,” Akira muttered, unfolding his arms to lean his side against the couch.

“All right, I won't beat around the bush,” Goro said with a nasty grin as he leaned back again. “I'm a murdering vigilante. I kill people who I feel don't deserve to live, and I get away with it because I'm using supernatural means.” The smile dropped off his face, and he cocked his head, piercing Akira with a look that compelled him to maintain eye contact. “Do you judge me for it?”

Akira couldn't reply immediately. Somehow, he knew that his answer to this was very important. But he wasn't sure at all how to react. So he just took the coward's way out. “Sounds like you're the one bringing down judgments, here.”

Goro's face broke into a sudden bright smile at the polar opposite of his earlier look, and he laughed. “I can't argue with that.”

“What makes you believe you're right, then?” Akira asked, looking down at his lap.

Goro's smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “If you're asking for some cold, hard rule, there is none. I go after murderers, and rapists, and con artists, and gangsters, abusive parents, and corrupt cops and politicians. My judgments are arbitrary, and entirely based off personal bias. I just think, _would the world be a better place without this person?_ That's all.”

Akira's eyebrows shot up. “Your apartment is stacked with so many fancy philosophy books, and that's your standard for judgment.”

Goro gave wry chuckle. “I mean, you can think over it for a whole lifetime if you want, but ultimately, it's all just about your own personal desire, isn't it? I'm doing this because I want to.” Goro set his hands in his lap, lacing and unlacing his fingers, rubbing his thumbs together idly. It was distracting. “It's just about asserting the way I think the world should be.”

“Your will to power, so to speak.”

A small smile quirked on Goro's lips. “Oh, so you do read books.”

“What makes you think I don't?” Hasn't every teenage boy skimmed over Nietzsche and dreamed himself a superman? Or maybe you needed a certain measure of intellectual arrogance to do that. Goro seemed like the type. Akira had—well, Akira had skimmed Nietzsche.

“...I suppose I don't know everything about you,” Goro conceded. “Maybe you'll surprise me more.”

“So,” Akira brought the subject back on track, “the shadow from last night.” He couldn't quite bring himself to say _killed_ yet, though he knew that was a word he'd have to force out eventually. “Who was he, exactly?”

Goro nodded. “Basically, he was an investor engaged in a lot of land speculation.”

“Ah.” That made sense. A gold mine. It was really on the nose.

“Right?” Goro smiled wryly. “He also used organized crime to help him rig the market, drive up prices when he wanted to sell, rough people up to get them to sell low, things like that. So there's really nothing for you to feel guilty about.”

“You're assuming I feel guilty.”

“Don't you?”

Akira wasn't sure. It didn't feel real. The man he shot had exploded into black ooze and melted away. It was hard to feel guilty when there wasn't a body.

“I don't know,” Akira answered honestly.

“Do you regret it?” Goro's expression wasn't exactly warm—Akira was starting to wonder if warm was even a thing he did—but it was at least sincere. Or it seemed so. Akira thought of himself as a good judge of people, generally, but the more he spoke with Goro, the more confused he felt.

“...No.” Kasumi's body was still vivid in his mind. More vivid than the face of that shadow.

Goro gave him a slow nod. “Well. So then will you join me?”

Akira was rather taken aback. Maybe he should have expected this, but it felt out of left field. “You want me to—be your partner in crime?”

A grin spread across Goro's face. “Well, if you want to put it that way, sure.”

“...I'm not sure how useful I could be, though. You're way stronger than me.”

“Right now. You might be surprised to hear I've only been doing this for about a year.”

Akira was surprised. Really surprised.

Goro answered his wide eyed look with a cocky shrug. “I can get you up to speed.”

Akira had to make a conscious effort to slow himself down, here. His impulse was to say yes. Of course he wanted to use his powers. Of course he wanted to go back to the world where he could summon a winged avatar to beat down his enemies, where he could jump higher and run faster and do whatever he wanted. It was like an absolute fantasy come true.

But a little whisper in his ear was saying, _maybe this is the devil's bargain._

“...And what if I say no?”

Goro's eyes narrowed. “If you choose to simply not use your powers and live out your normal life, then go ahead. I won't force you. It's a dangerous path, and you really have nothing to gain, personally. We go our separate ways, and I won't bother you again.”

“...But if I oppose you, try to stop you from killing people?”

Goro was still for a moment, and then he flashed a bright smile. “I don't think you're that stupid.”

He was right. Akira wasn't that stupid. He sighed.

“Let me be clear,” Goro said with a more neutral, rather less fake expression. “I'd much rather have you as a friend than a foe. I want you to join me.”

“Why? It seems like you've been managing yourself this far.”

“That doesn't mean I'm not constantly risking my life,” Goro said, and he didn't seem to like admitting that. “It would be safer to have a partner. ...And it's not just that.” He looked to the side, paused as if he were thinking. “I think it would be good for me to have a partner. To get another perspective. How can I really understand my own thoughts without someone to compare with?”

“You want me to keep you in check.” That caught Akira off-guard. Goro came off like a lone wolf. But maybe that was a facade. Akira thought of the bloody bandages in his bathroom and the _Featherman_ figure on his bookshelf. Didn't sentai mean a team?

“...Maybe.” Goro's gaze shifted to meet his. “Conflict and tension can give rise to creativity. I think you and I could accomplish something greater than me alone.”

“...That's some pretty big talk.” It was appealing, all right, but this was just talk, and Goro was clearly very good at that. Akira wasn't sure this guy could be trusted—he was just a bit too smooth, just a bit too good, and Akira couldn't kick the feeling that he was hiding something.

“Well, if you care more about action, I think we worked together pretty well last night.”

Fair enough. But that had been force of circumstance. Should he do it again, this time by choice?

“I don't know,” Akira said, finally.

“Well, I suppose I can't ask you to make such an important decision out of the blue,” Goro said. “It's been less than a day since you came into your powers, after all. Spend all the time you like considering it.”

“Goro...” Akira began, and saw Goro twitch in response to his name being used. “Oh, should I be calling you Senpai, then? Akechi-senpai? Since you're my senior in various ways,” Akira added with a cheeky grin.

Goro hesitated a moment. His eyelids dropped, and he said, looking uncharacteristically...bashful? “...No, Goro is fine.”

“Who was the first person you killed, after you got these powers? Why did you start?”

Goro folded and unfolded his fingers in his lap, still looking down. When he looked up again, his eyes were hard. “It was someone who hurt me personally. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Akira couldn't answer that question. He wasn't surprised about Goro's answer, though. “Did killing them make you feel better?”

Goro's lips pulled into a firm line. “Is that what you think I care about? _Self-satisfaction?_ Who cares how it makes me feel? Now they can't hurt anyone else. That's it.” There was a level of bite in his voice that just about made Akira wince, and his expression twisted into something deadly. That one line communicated more to him than anything else Goro had said that night.

“You're angry.”

“Of course I'm fucking angry,” Goro spat, folding his arms. “There's sure plenty for me to be angry about. But you understand that, don't you? Based on what you did last night.” Then he sighed, unfolded his arms, and stood from the couch. “We've discussed everything there is to discuss, and it's getting late. I have to ask you to go.”

It was so sudden, Akira's first reaction was to resist. He looked up at Goro, and for some reason, his mind was cooking up reasons to stay.

Akira shook his head and stood from the couch. “Yeah. I should get home.” He grabbed his blazer and headed for the door, but then paused on the way. “Give me your number, though.”

“Oh, of course.” Goro went back to the couch to grab his phone, and they exchanged numbers. “Let me know about your decision.”

“I will.” Akira nodded. As he was getting his shoes on, he paused. “Oh, just so you know, I didn't throw out anything, because it seemed like you use a lot of junk for whatever. I just separated everything that seemed like garbage into different plastic bags.”

Goro gave an aggrieved sigh. “Why the hell did you have to clean my apartment?”

Why the hell had he, indeed? “...You seemed like you needed the help.”

Goro didn't reply to that. He just turned away.

“I mean, how can you have such a nice place and not keep it clean, right? Your parents must be loaded.”

Goro's face was still turned away as he said, “...I do have family with...means.” His tone was unreadable. When he turned to Akira again, he had his usual neutral expression on. “I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. I do hope you'll consider my offer seriously.”

Akira just nodded, and left.


	7. The Second Inevitability

Akira faked sick for three days, and when he came to school again, he found Sumire waiting for him outside of his classroom in the morning. It was surprising to see her in the high school building—she had to have been coming every day, waiting for him.

She looked different from usual. Her eyes were not downcast, looking him straight in the eye the moment she noticed him. She looked tired, with stress plain on her face.

Akira didn't want to see her face. The two of them looked so similar. He focused his gaze on a spot slightly to her left as he rubbed one eye. He was tired, too.

“You haven't replied to my texts,” she said, skipping past the hello.

Akira looked down. He'd been playing sick because he was avoiding this. “I've been sick. Sorry.”

“What happened that night?” she asked him, leaning in to lower her voice as other students walked by.

Akira reached up to tug at his hair. "Kasumi, she..." He had fully meant to tell her. Just, now that this moment had come, he didn't want to make up a story about something as serious as this, and yet, he didn't think she would believe the truth. He chewed his lip inside his mouth. He'd spent the past few days pondering what to say, but he still hadn't come up with anything good.

Sumire's face went through a wealth of expressions when she heard her sister's name, from surprise, to relief, then despair. "You saw my sister, Kasumi?" she said. "You really did?"

When Akira only nodded and said nothing more, she pressed, “You can tell me anything. I promise, I won't tell anyone else.”

That wasn't the issue, though. He knew Sumire wasn't the type to blab things.

All he could do was be vague about it. “...I tried looking for her. But I think it's bad. There's nothing I can do, I'm sorry.”

He saw her face fall. “...I see. I'm not worth telling, am I?”

Akira shook his head hard. “No, that's not it.”

Lashes lowered, Sumire's eyes dropped to the floor. Her expression was back to usual. “You think I can't handle it.”

“What? No, that's not it, honestly.”

She sighed and fiddled with the strap of her schoolbag, dangling from both hands in front of her. “Listen, Senpai, actually, that night, I saw—”

“Akira Kurusu.” A voice cut her off.

It was Akira's homeroom teacher. The both of them turned around to look. “I've been told to take you to the principal's office for an important discussion. Pardon me.” She nodded at Sumire, and then without giving Akira a moment to protest, she started walking off, expecting him to follow.

“Sorry,” Akira said as Sumire stood there, mouth open like she wanted to say something, and then he followed after the teacher.

x x x

Walking into the principal's office, Akira was greeted by two police officers.

“Akira Kurusu?” one said, and the homeroom teacher bowed out, leaving him alone with the two cops and the principal. Akira nodded.

“We're here to take you to the station for questioning.”

Akira was about to say, _about what?_ But then he realized. How had he not even considered this? Kasumi had been missing for three days, and he was the last one to have been seen with her.

So he just nodded, and after a brief exchange with the principal, officers escorted him out of the principal's office.

Class had already started by the time they came out, so the halls were mostly empty as Akira walked along, flanked by the two officers. It felt like he was being arrested.

On the way, though, Akira heard footsteps around a corner, and then a familiar face was walking out in front of them.

“Oh! Pardon me,” Goro said, a look of polite surprise on his face as his eyes shifted between the two officers, then Akira. “I wasn't expecting to see you here, Officer Nakabe.”

The cop on the left nodded in greeting. “Oh, this is your school, isn't it? Sometimes I forget you're still just a kid.”

Seeing Goro interact with the cops, for the first time, it hit Akira that Goro actually was a detective, like he had said. Somehow, it hadn't really clicked the first time he'd heard it. Thinking back, Akira had in fact heard some girls in his class talking about “Goro Akechi” who was sometimes on TV, but Akira hadn't really been paying attention, and he didn't watch variety shows, so he hadn't really been aware of it.

Goro laughed. His entire manner was completely different when he'd been alone with Akira. “I'm flattered you would say that. ...But it's no surprise, seeing as you don't see me at school. What are you doing here?”

“Not your case,” the other cop cut in. Unlike Officer Nakabe, who seemed rather friendly with Goro, this guy was giving him a sour look.

“Oh, of course,” Goro waved his hands. “I don't mean to step into your territory. I was just curious.”

“Why, friend of yours?” the other cop said.

Goro blinked, then looked at Akira. “No, I don't know him.” He tilted his head, bringing a hand to his chin. “Maybe I've seen him in the halls?” Goro was talking about him like he wasn't even there. Then he smacked a fist on his hand. “Ahh, I know, he that gymnast, Yoshizawa's boyfriend. Everyone in the school knows about her.”

Akira hadn't technically been her boyfriend, but now wasn't the time to be arguing that.

“If you know already, don't bother asking,” said the grumpy cop. “Trying to fish for information again? We're handling the Yoshizawa case. So mind your own business.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Goro raised his hands defensively. Then he nodded at Officer Nakabe. “Good luck with the case, and I'll be seeing you down at the station early next week. It seems like it'll be a tough one. I know we're not exactly friends here, but do feel free to call and ask for my help, if you need it,” Goro said. He was turned to the officers, but his eyes flicked over to Akira, locking gazes with him for just a split second. “And I'll do what I can.”

“You think we need help from a brat like you?” The grumpy officer snorted. “You just get more arrogant every day, don't you?”

With one last bow and smile, Goro left the two officers, continuing on down the hall, and Officer Nakabe smiled and waved at him. Akira resisted the urge to turn and watch him go.

What the hell had he been talking about, just now?

x x x

Akira had been naive. Deeply, deeply naive.

Sitting on his bed in the detention cell where he'd spent the past five days, he laid his chin on his hands and yet again, wondered what the fuck he was going to do.

Kasumi Yoshizawa's body had turned up in the underground parking lot of the mall where Akira and Goro had gone to try to rescue her. How other world connected with this one, Akira didn't know, but in the end, the police had found a body. The result was that Kasumi was determined to have been murdered, and the most suspicious person here was Akira, her boyfriend, who had been last seen with her the night she disappeared.

As for motive—it seemed that “lover's quarrel” was enough to explain all of that. And no matter how much Akira vehemently denied it, they wouldn't let him go. They had let him call his parents, and his parents, of course, firmly believed in his innocence and said they would vouch for him, but his dad was overseas on business, and his mom was recovering from a long period of hospitalization, so neither of them could come to Tokyo on short notice. And even if they did come, how much could they do, really? Akira told them not to come. He didn't want to cause his mother additional stress that could worsen her health, and he wasn't going to crash his dad's career for this, either. He could handle it on his own.

Every day, he was questioned, and every day, the tactics became a little more aggressive, the manner of the police a little harder. But Akira believed he could hold out.

Then, on the fifth day, he had an unexpected visitor.

Goro Akechi came to visit his detention cell, alone.

“Just so you know, we're not being recorded here,” Goro said as he pulled up a chair at the table opposite where Akira had come to sit. “Why didn't you call me? Did you not get my hint? Agh,” He said, laying his forehead on his hand with an expression of the utmost exasperation.

Still rather surprised, Akira shook his head. “I got you were trying to say something. But they took my cell phone. I don't know your number by heart.”

“You can ask them for numbers from your phone to call a friend, you know...” Goro was giving him an _are you an idiot?_ look.

“...I guess I didn't think they would keep me this long.” More to the point, Akira hadn't really believed that Goro could or would help him. But he wasn't quite willing to say that.

“Then you're deeply naive.” Goro said coldly. “I'll get to the point. The detective in charge of your case is a man who is absolutely desperate to get promoted, and he'll nail you because you're an easy target and he wants to move up. At this rate, you're going to be pressured into confessing to Yoshizawa's murder.”

Akira folded his arms on the table and sighed. “I'm not going to confess to anything.”

Goro snorted. “You have absolutely no conception of the kinds of psychological tactics the police use. You think it's no big deal, just because they're not beating you up? You're going to give in. I've seen it happen a million times.”

Akira stared at the table. This wasn't anything he hadn't already been thinking for these past few days. “So what, then? Why are you here?”

Goro leaned back in his seat, crossed his legs, and folded his gloved hands over his lap. “I'm here to make you an offer. I use my pull with the police to let you out. No criminal record, you'll be treated as entirely innocent—which you are. And in return, you help me with my mission.”

Akira leaned his elbow on the table and combed a hand through his hair, thinking. He couldn't help but feel there was more to this. There was a catch.

“...If I get off, then who takes the fall for it?” he asked, finally.

“Oh, you're not as dumb as I thought,” Goro said with a smirk. “I already have someone ready for it. He's involved in international human trafficking and he beats his girlfriend, too, so you don't have to feel bad about him. Don't you think it would be better for the world if he were behind bars?”

“...I have no proof you're telling me the truth.”

“Indeed you don't. But it's not like you have any other options.”

“Why are you willing to stick your neck out for me like this?” Akira let his hand fall to the table so he could get a good look at Goro. His face was as hard as a mask. Akira couldn't read him.

“I told you, I want your help on my mission. And right now, you're the only person who could possibly help me. If I let you go to juvenile detention, that's it. I don't know if I'll ever get a chance like this again.” He looked aside a moment, then right back at Akira. “And well, no matter what you may think about my methods, you understand that I'm motivated by a desire for justice, don't you? It would be an injustice for you to be jailed for a crime I personally know you didn't commit. That's enough of a reason for me.”

Akira was silent, just sitting there examining Goro for a while. This all sounded very reasonable. But at the end of the day, Akira still didn't trust him. And was it worth getting tangled up with him and his dubious mission just for Akira's own personal freedom? That would ultimately be a decision of pure selfishness, wouldn't it?

And it wasn't like there was no hope at all for him to prove his innocence. He could still try to fight this. Goro could easily be exaggerating the situation just to pressure him.

“...But even saying it's about justice, you wouldn't help me for free. You want something out of it.”

“Well,” a grin grew on Goro's face, “I won't throw away an opportunity like this, it's true. This is my life on the line, as well. I want someone to have my back. Can you blame me for that?”

“You would trust me to have your back? You don't even know me.”

Goro was struck silent for a moment. He just looked back at Akira with an expression that communicated nothing. “...You're right, of course. I don't know you. But it's strange. I just get the feeling like I can trust you. That's all.”

It was a weird thing to have someone say to you, and it sat heavily in Akira's gut. The thought that this guy he'd only met less than a week ago trusted him for no reason—

It made Akira want to live up to that trust, crazily enough.

Maybe Goro was just saying this to manipulate him.

Akira shook his head. “Helping you indefinitely in return for getting let off this once doesn't seem like an even trade.” Even he could tell like it sounded like he was capitulating.

“Well then, let's say this,” Goro nodded. “You help me for two years. After that, we go our separate ways. I won't interfere in your business, and you won't interfere in mine. Two years is about the minimum you'd be in juvenile detention for this, after all.”

Akira stared back at Goro for a long moment.

This was a deal with the devil, wasn't it?

“I'm going to be doing my business whether you help me or not, Akira,” Goro said with a cold look straight in the eye. “But if you agree to my deal, you'll be able to influence my behavior somewhat.”

“...By being complicit in extrajudicial killings.”

“You already are, though? Why not drop the other shoe?” Goro leaned forward over the table, bringing his face close to Akira's, his voice close to a whisper. With him close enough that Akira could feel his breath, Akira shivered with something that resembled that feeling you get from staring off the edge of a cliff, knowing one step could take you over the edge. It was the urge to take that step, even knowing what would happen.

“Do you know who I killed last night, Akira?” Goro murmured like a lover in the bedroom. “A politician who has raped at least three of his secretaries and gotten away with it each time. And he would have done it again, had I not stopped him. He would keep getting away with it, because of his position of power. Can you really say I'm wrong? I think, deep in your heart, you believe as well as I do that some people deserve to die.”

Goro leaned back again, but his eyes never left Akira. “So? Do I have your answer?”

Akira closed his eyes, and nodded.

x x x

Goro fulfilled everything he promised.

It took some time and some paperwork, but Akira was declared innocent and released with a full apology. Afterward, the detective who'd been in charge of his case, who Akira had faced many times in the interrogation room, could no longer be seen at the station. Akira didn't ask what had happened to him.

What actually shocked Akira the most, though, was that despite his official innocence, at school, everything had changed. There was a tornado of rumors going around the school about Kasumi's death, and Akira was caught in the middle of it. Kasumi's friends—many of whom Akira now found out had privately thought that she was scraping the bottom of the barrel by associating with him—across the board were treating him like her murderer—or at the very least, at fault for letting it happen. Akira had only been at his new school for a scant few months, and his friendships there were still fresh, and apparently, also not worth much. Suddenly, people who had been friendly with him were now avoiding him.

Some people, however, were drawn to him rather than driven away—a girl from the school journalism club started hounding him on a regular basis, trying to get an interview with him. "I'm not giving up on the Sumi Yoshizawa case!" she said. "No one else is is going to tell that poor girl's story, so I have to!" But she was on the better side, being more direct about it. The ones who watched and whispered around corners were the worst.

Not long after his release, Goro texted him at lunch, saying he was coming over to his apartment after school to discuss business.

Akira wasn't sure he liked the idea of Goro knowing where he lived. **Can't we go to your place?**

**Yours is closer to where we're going.**

Akira stared at his phone a moment. **You know where I live?**

**It was in your student records. It's not difficult information to find.**

...Was that a threat? Was he trying to make a point that Akira had nowhere to run? **I'm not backing out, okay,** Akira replied, more offended that Goro thought he would back out than scared of the implicit threat.

Goro didn't reply to that, so Akira sighed and tucked his phone away.

After school, Akira looked around at the gates, thinking that maybe Goro would be waiting around for him, but apparently not. Well, Goro was the one with the information. Akira headed home, didn't see anyone in front of his apartment building. He checked his phone, saw no messages.

The door to his apartment was unlocked. Akira had definitely locked it before he left. Stepping inside, he found the lights already on, and beyond the entrance hallway, there was Goro, sitting in front of the low table in his studio reading one of his books. He didn't look up when Akira entered.

Akira took off his shoes and dropped his bag by the entrance, coming over to stand over Goro in the studio living space, hands in his pockets. “You don't have to threaten me.”

Goro's eyes flicked up and him, and then he set down the book on the table in front of him. It was one of Akira's _Sherlock Holmes_ collection. “Just being extra cautious.”

“Remember that time you said you felt you could trust me?”

“...Those sorts of feelings are exactly the sort of thing you shouldn't trust.”

With a sigh, Akira pulled out a spare cushion from where he kept it under the TV, set it down, and thumped himself down on the floor in front of Goro. “We couldn't just meet at the school gates, huh.”

“Considering your reputation, that would be unwise.” Goro leaned back on his hands.

For some reason, Goro treating him like someone he couldn't be seen with at school stung particularly. He thought back on the way Goro had acted so smiley and friendly when he was around anyone else but him. It made him feel simultaneously flattered and offended that Goro didn't seem to think he was worth faking it for. “Yeah, I'd hate to ruin your image.”

“As long as we're both on the same page?” Goro gave him a smile that was more like bared teeth, and then he went to the small duffel bag beside him—not the metallic briefcase he had before. Unzipping it, he shuffled through its contents and pulled out a number of items.

A toy gun. A high-quality Halloween-looking plastic knife. A bottle of one of those dubious liquids that Akira recognized from his medicine cabinet. A toy sword that broke down into three sections and folded up.

“What is this?” Akira picked up the toy gun, turned it around in his hands. “Isn't this from the old _Featherman 2000_ theatrical movie?”

“Oh, you recognize it?” Goro smiled all the way to his eyes, and the expression took Akira completely off-guard. “It's too beat-up to really have collector value, but I couldn't pass it up. The prop design for that film was fantastic.” Then, seeing Akira staring at him, wide-eyed at his sudden burst of fanboyish enthusiasm, Goro cleared his throat, cheeks coloring slightly. “...Not like it matters. That's not why I brought it.” The scowl that Akira had seen on his face every time they'd been alone together returned, but it seemed a little forced, this time.

Suppressing a smile, Akira just gave him a look to prompt him to continue.

Goro explained briefly about how weapons and items and such worked in the other world, then packed the things back into the duffel bag, which he handed to Akira—apparently, he was to be the beast of burden, here.

“Well, let's not waste any more time, then.”

“Where are we going?” Akira asked as they got their shoes on to go.

“You'll see.”

x x x

When Goro lead him down into the ominous-looking otherworldly train station, the duffel bag over his shoulder transformed into a little drawstring pouch that dropped into his hand. Goro laughed at his surprise.

“Neat, isn't it? I ordered that bag online from some geek-themed web shop. It was called a _bag of holding._ ” Goro reached inside the little bag and pulled out one sword, then another for Akira. “Just think of the item you want, and you'll get it. It works just like in fantasy stories. But careful not to put in too much, or when we leave, the bag will explode.”

Akira had to admit, this was pretty neat.

Goro explained the composition of the shadowy subway, and about how it seemed this was a manifestation of the collective unconscious. Akira wasn't really listening. There was something deeply nostalgic about this place, like he was coming home, and yet, it also seemed gratingly wrong. As he spoke, Akira looked around him. He felt this strange breeze coming from somewhere, but he couldn't see a source. It was strange. He felt like he was being watched.

He shook his head. It was probably just the wind in the tunnels. Staring out at the subway train tracks in front of them, Akira pondered what Goro had said about the collective unconscious. “How do you know all this?”

“...I've come down here a lot. These are just observations of mine.”

Akira shook his head. “I don't think most people would see a creepy underground train station and jump straight to Jung.”

“...You really do read books, don't you?” Goro gave him a condescending smile under that creepy bird mask.

“I keep telling you that.”

“...I've read some of the research on cognitive psience.”

“I've literally never heard that term before.”

“Of course you haven't.” Goro casually spun his sword in one hand as he faced Akira. It looked very sharp. “All the research on it is highly confidential.”

“So then how do you know about it?”

Goro stopped spinning the sword and turned toward the empty train tracks as if he were thinking. “...I don't have to tell you that.”

What a bizarre thing to say. “You're not going to hide that you're keeping secrets from me? Why not just lie about it?” That reaction almost made it seem as if Goro wanted him to ask, to probe.

“...I'd rather not lie to you. But I'm under no obligation to tell you everything about my life.”

Akira opened his mouth to say something else, but Goro cut him off.

“It's here.”

The train came in, and the shadow people began to shuffle on board. Akira was about to follow when Goro grabbed his arm. “Don't be stupid. We go this way.” And he hopped from the platform to the side of the train, clambering up to the top, where he turned around to look at Akira. “You coming?”

“...Isn't that wildly dangerous?”

Goro grinned at him with more than a tinge of madness in his eyes. “Of course.”

After only the briefest moment of hesitation, Akira followed him up the side of the train to crouch with him on the roof.

“Keep your head down, or you'll get decapitated,” Goro said as if he were talking about something as mundane as breakfast.

x x x

They jumped off while the train was still in motion, rolling onto a darker and creepier looking platform than the one they'd boarded at. This place didn't look much like a train station anymore—there were tunnels burrowing off at odd directions, even vertically or straight downward, and the tunnels were scattered with odd urban detritus. It was all very eerie, and it felt off to Akira.

“Any particular reason we couldn't have just gotten on the train?” Akira asked as they left the platform and headed down a different set of tracks on foot.

“You saw how many shadows were packed in there,” Goro said as they walked along. “Riding on top may be dangerous, but riding inside is suicidal.”

“...Have you gone inside before?”

Goro stopped and turned to look at him. He gave a nasty smile. “Do you want me to spend the next hour monologuing about all the times I've nearly died here, or do you want me to teach you how to fight shadows?”

“Why do you get so mad every time I ask you questions about yourself?”

Goro actually seemed taken aback by that remark, and he didn't reply immediately. He slid his eyes aside, then turned his back to Akira. “...We're not friends, and we're not here to be chummy. We just have a deal, and I want you to fulfill your end of the bargain, not chat over tea.”

There wasn't much idle chat after that.

Goro did explain about the construction of the otherworldly train station, how it seemed he could unlock deeper areas as he became more renowned as an ace detective on TV. “I believe it's based on the acceptance of the masses,” he said, “but I still can't go very deep in. I'm not really that famous. Who knows how far this place runs."

Akira had the strange feeling it went deeper. A lot deeper. But he didn't say anything about it.

They fought shadows. Some of them, Akira had seen before—others seemed familiar at first glance, but then halfway through battle, they would transform into something different entirely. The two of them went down wild and twisting paths, frequently having walls come down behind them, and once, Akira just about fell into a pit that opened up below them before Goro grabbed him and pulled him back. Goro said that was just the way Mementos was—constantly changing and morphing like they were inside the bowels of a great beast.

That didn't seem right to Akira. He couldn't help but feel this whole place was off, and every once in a while, he thought he saw a flash of white rolling along the tunnels around them, but whenever he turned around, the thing was gone. So he put that feeling out of mind.

Goro went a little wild when he fought shadows. It wasn't like Akira hadn't noticed that before, but he'd been distracted by other matters. Now he had enough attention to notice the way Goro's lips broke into a smirk, the way he would slice at shadows a little more than strictly necessary, the way he would throw himself into fights aggressively and without caution. It seemed wildly at odds with his princely attire, and yet somehow, Akira got the impression that he was still holding himself back somewhat.

And speaking of that attire—unlike in the mine, when Goro had at least maintained some of the princely aesthetic in his manner, now, Goro seemed to have abandoned any front, tying his hair into a ponytail and pinning his bangs back with bobby pins, stripping off the jacket to fight just in pants and an undershirt—it seemed he could just make it vanish and reappear at will—and when they took breaks, he just wore it over his shoulders like a gangster.

Taking a leaf out of his book, Akira tossed off his jacket, and found he could do the same thing.

“When it comes back, it'll still have everything you had in the pockets, too.” Goro was leaning against the wall in one of the rest stations, eating a convenience store rice ball he'd popped out of their bag of holding.

“You look far less princely like this,” Akira commented from his seat across from Goro, half a tuna and mayo rice ball in his hands. He was trying not to stare, but that sleeveless undershirt really showed off Goro's surprisingly toned arms. These outfits never seemed to get sweaty, but his neck was still glistening and his face was flushed from running around, and Akira was already thinking about what that sweat would taste like.

There were scars across both his arms, but most looked old. _If you heal it right away, you can walk out with no scars or wounds,_ Goro had informed him on their way down. _The longer they remain, the more your increasing belief in their presence will make them settle in._ Akira was curious, but hadn't asked for details.

Since they'd gotten down here, it was like Goro never seemed to look at him. His eyes were always out on the trains instead. “There's no point in putting on an act for you.”

Again, Akira felt both weirdly flattered and offended. “So then what, that outfit is a manifestation of the pretty smiles you show to everyone else?”

Goro finished off the rice ball, but didn't answer his question. “How about you? Do you fancy yourself a classy rebel?”

Akira couldn't really answer that. He wasn't sure how he saw himself, if he were being honest.

“The outfits don't matter.” Goro waved a hand. “I'm more curious about how you absorbed those shadows' power. Absolutely fascinating.”

“...What, you can't do that?” During their fights, Akira had spoken with various shadows to adopt them as his personas. It had just seemed natural to him, somehow, like recalling old memories.

Again, Goro was looking somewhere else. “I've spoken to some, in the past. They always say strange, cryptic things, and then at the end, they finish off with, _I'm not going with_ you, or _I'm nothing like_ you, or _you're not the one I'm looking for!_ Not like being unwanted is a new experience to me.” He barked a laugh, then finally turned to Akira, his expression bitter. “So are you the one they're looking for, then?”

Akira tilted his head, thought about it. He only had gut feelings on this, but what he said felt right. “You have to accept shadows first, before they'll accept you. It's like making friends. Most people are passive. You have to be the one to reach out.”

Goro seemed to take time to digest that. Then he looked away again, folding his arms. “...That sounds about right, I guess,” he muttered. “Might as well give up on trying that, then.” Then he pushed off the wall. “Let's get going. We've spent enough time training. We should get to our target.”

“Who?” Akira asked as he followed Goro out of the rest station, heading for the platform again. He still felt that strange wind that seemed to be watching him, even down here, but it seemed too crazy to bring up to Goro. Maybe that was just part of how this place was.

“A beaurocrat who gets paid off to ignore police corruption, basically,” Goro said as the train arrived. “I made this selection before I met you, but well, it's timely, isn't it? I figure you'll get some personal satisfaction out of seeing this one gone.”

Climbing up onto the train again, Akira didn't answer. He didn't want to admit that Goro was kind of right.

When they jumped off again, Goro said, “I'm going to leave handling this one entirely to you. Show me what you can do.”

Akira rolled his shoulders and spun the sword in one hand, an imitation of what he'd seen Goro do earlier. It was funny—things he knew he couldn't do in real life, if he just sort of... _believed,_ here, were strangely easy. He'd never used a sword before in his life, but when Goro had told him, _just think of it like you're in a video game, and it'll happen,_ he'd found that was quite true.

The shadow Goro introduced him to turned into an winged knight-looking sort of creature, and Goro just stood off to the side, leaning his weight on one leg like he was bored, watching Akira fight it.

Akira wouldn't lie—fighting the thing was a rush, and winning felt good. It was hard to think of it as anything other than defeating a monster, even knowing what would happen to the human being on the other end. Maybe this was what made it so easy for Goro. And when he was done, his heart was still racing as he strode back toward Goro, blade still coated in black goo dangling from one hand. He tossed off his mask to wipe the sweat off his face, swiping back his sweat-slick hair with one hand. Goro was looking back at him with a smug smile that communicated something along the lines of, _acceptable, for a beginner._ Akira kind of wanted to wipe that arrogant smile off his face—either with his fist or with his lips, both seemed appealing right about now.

“Easy,” Akira said with a grin. “I wouldn't mind another fight with a strong one like that.”

“The shadows around here are all weaklings, though.” Goro's smirk widened.

“The two of us could fight. Just for fun.” It was an impulsive proposal, and probably just the adrenaline talking.

Goro laughed at him, and it seemed weirdly sincere. “I would absolutely destroy you.”

 _Sounds hot,_ Akira just about said, but kept it behind his teeth. “It seems like you know how to hold back, though.”

“Aha, you can tell?” Goro's eyes grew dark.

“I kinda want to see you let loose.” Something vicious lay just under the surface in those eyes, and Akira wanted to see it for himself. Maybe it was just curiosity, maybe it was just exciting to him. Or maybe he thought it might spark something inside him. Whatever. He wanted it, though.

“...I don't think that would be wise.”

“Then just fight me with your right hand or whatever, come on,” Akira said, lowering himself into a fighting stance as he raised his blade. “No personas, even.”

“...You're a little bit crazy, aren't you?” Goro said, but he was smiling. “All right, if you insist.” He drew his own glowing blade out of the bag of holding.

x x x

The fight was over very quickly.

Akira wound up on the ground on his back, with Goro's shoe pressing his head to the ground and his blade at his throat. Akira uncled out quickly, before Goro could notice that he was getting a boner out of this.

For all his impulsivity, Akira knew when not to cross a line. Even if Goro was into guys—and it was probably just Akira's wishful thinking saying that he might be—every hair on Akira's body told him that Goro Akechi was a bad fucking idea. This was a guy who had basically admitted that he would kill Akira if he crossed him.

...And the fact that that was _exciting_ to Akira was a warning sign. A big, fat red flag.

So Akira would play around. He'd toss this hot potato around, but he wasn't going to bite into it.

To get back, Goro pulled out what looked like a couple of badges from an old sci-fi show, tossing Akira one to pin to his shirt, then he tapped it and said, “Beam me up.” Akira imitated him, and after a brief moment of disorientation, he realized they were at the gates of the train station, standing next to a little model spaceship that Goro had left there on their way down.

“How the hell did that work?”

“Collective consciousness is a useful thing,” Goro said, putting the pins and spaceship back into the bag of holding. “You just need to get creative.”

On their way out of the subway, the world shifted around them in that nauseating way again as they stepped into the Shinjuku night.

Goro looked like he was checking his messages on his phone, then stuck it back in his pocket. “Sorry this is rather sudden, but I have to get going.”

“Why, hot date?” Akira teased, slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder.

Goro just stared at him. “No. I have work.”

“Too bad. You'd think a pretty face like that would get you lots of girls.”

“I don't have time for that nonsense.”

Right as Goro was saying that, Akira noticed a face in the crowds, and it was coming closer. He froze, hoping she wouldn't notice him, but then when she looked over, he was forced to wave, and she came towards him.

“Senpai,” she said, giving a polite nod to Goro as well. “I-I didn't expect to see you here.” She seemed oddly anxious, for some reason. Well, considering recent events, it was only normal that she was under stress. She was wearing her hair up in a ponytail, like Kasumi always had, and she didn't have her glasses on.

“Sumire. How are you? I haven't seen you at school,” Akira said. “I've missed you.” Both a lie and the truth. He kept his eyes focused somewhere to the left of her face. Sumire had always hung around Kasumi and her friends, and after Kasumi's death, all of her friends were now always around Sumire, sticking way closer to her than they had been before, making it difficult for Akira to be around her—well, though that wasn't the only reason it was difficult to be around her.

Sumire's eyes flicked up at him, a little startled, and she got this strange expression of relief on her face before looking down at the ground. “There's been a lot going on.”

“You can always come talk to me.”

“...Thank you. But I figured you've had enough to deal with, lately.”

“I'm okay, really.”

Akira looked at her a moment, examining her face, and regretted it immediately. He looked away again. It seemed like there was something she wanted to say—she was fidgeting with her hands.

But then she looked up again. “Oh, he left,” she said, turning around, and Akira saw that Goro was gone. He hadn't even said goodbye.

“I guess he was really in a hurry,” Akira said, but that explanation didn't satisfy him. Goro had even left him with the duffel bag.

“Senpai...” she trailed off, then as if she'd steeled herself, said, “...You've made friends with Goro Akechi?”

Akira was startled she would bring that up. “Huh? I guess.”

She looked down and to the side, still fidgeting. “I know he seems like a nice person, but, I don't know...I get a bad feeling about him.”

It was highly unusual for Sumire to say anything bad about anyone. Even if she might be thinking it, she wasn't the bold type who would be out with it. And well, considering that her _bad feeling_ was highly on the mark, Akira found himself re-evaluating her. She clearly had sharp instincts.

“He's not quite the person he acts like, true...” Akira said, eyes sliding back down into the subway as he considered their day. “But he's interesting.”

Sumire looked up at him, then down at the ground. “Do you like him, Senpai?”

Akira found himself surprisingly unable to answer that. Impressed by him? Attracted to him? Slightly scared of him, horrified by him, excited by him? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

“...Yeah, maybe.”

Close enough. He needed to justify to her why he was hanging around Goro, anyway.

“...I see.”

Then Sumire turned around and walked back into the crowds.


	8. Playing House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took the scene that was at the beginning of this chapter and placed it at the end of the next chapter for reasons that may become clear later.

When Goro opened the door to his apartment, Akira greeted him in an apron, holding a ladle.

“Ugh. You again,” Goro grunted.

“What, no _honey, I'm home?_ ” Akira made an offended look.

“I'm changing the locks,” Goro said as he slipped off his shoes.

In the past few months as Goro's partner in crime, Akira had acquired various skills, the latest of which was lockpicking. It was surprisingly useful, and surprisingly easy.

“I'll just break through them anyway.”

“Is this a petty revenge thing for that one time I did this to you?” Goro sighed, stepping inside. “How did you get into the building? You need to buzz in.”

“That was the easy part. I just ran into a nice lady at the entrance and told her I forgot my keys.”

“Ahh, that's why you're wearing those tight pants.”

“Oh, you were looking, huh?” Akira turned around and smacked his own ass, and Goro rolled his eyes. Akira's jokey flirting didn't seem to have much of an effect on him, but that wasn't going to stop Akira from doing it. It was just another way to harass Goro.

Taking his briefcase over to the living room, where the TV was still faintly murmuring, Goro sat down there with a thump and opened up his briefcase on the floor, rifling through the papers inside. “And what is your obsession with cleaning my apartment? Do you not have better things to do?”

In the kitchen, Akira checked the curry pot—it'd be a while. He set it to simmer, put on the alarm, and went out to join Goro in the living room.

The real answer was _yes._ Since what had happened with Kasumi, it had gotten harder to make friends at school, and Akira had felt his desire to do so draining away. He couldn't help but read too deeply into their attitudes toward him—did that one feel sorry for him, was that one faking it because she just wanted to seem like a good person? He'd considered transferring schools, but that felt like capitulation. His grades had actually improved quite a lot, since he had nothing better to do except study, and at home, he found himself just lying around watching old _Featherman_ reruns.

Sometimes he would go out to Shinjuku at night at pretend to be eighteen. That didn't make him feel better, but it was a distraction, at least. There was nothing like being on your knees in a bathroom stall to drive all the unwanted thoughts out of your head.

He tried to connect with people. There was this politician who was always doing street speeches Akira went to visit regularly, but he was a busy man. He was nice, but he didn't have the time to be humoring some high school kid. And there was this model gun shop owner Akira kept trying to hit on, but he wasn't the kind of guy who would make friends with anyone.

Akira met this reporter at a bar in Shinjuku who immediately sussed him out as being a minor, and he liked her. But there was always a line he couldn't cross with her. There was nothing to connect them, ultimately. That was how it was with everyone.

Goro bitched about it, but he wouldn't show Akira the door. Not as long as Akira was useful to him.

Sitting down opposite Goro, Akira pulled over the board with the unfinished chess game from last time between them. “I'll stop cleaning your apartment when you stop obviously needing a mommy.”

Goro scowled at him, just like Akira knew he would. Goro reacted like a hedgehog to any mention of his parents, joking or no, and Akira enjoyed poking the bear.

“Why bother continuing this game? You're going to lose,” Goro said, but he immediately made his move as if he'd been thinking about it in Akira's absence, shifting over his bishop.

“Overconfident as usual,” Akira said as he immediately made his. He'd been thinking about his next move, too.

“I have to do work,” Goro said, but he wasn't even looking at his open briefcase.

“He says, running away 'cause he's scared he'll get his ass kicked.”

Goro just clicked his tongue in irritation and smacked down his piece.

It was only recently that they'd started hanging out regularly like this. For a while, their pattern had been, Goro texted him, they met up in the other world, and they only interacted there. At school, both pretended like the other didn't exist. They operated in separate spheres, and only made contact for business. Akira knew that once this agreement of theirs ended, they would probably never speak again.

But then sometimes, they had started lingering at the entrance of the shadowy train station before leaving, or dawdling on their way to a mission, or going for “training” sessions that weren't strictly necessary. Akira wasn't deluded about what he meant to Goro, but he also knew that Goro had literally nobody else in his life. And these days, Akira was starting to understand the sort of mentality that brought you to.

On the TV behind him, Akira heard another report of one of those incidents where someone just lost it in public. This time, a man had gone on a rampage in the middle of Shibuya, beating a handful of random passers-by with a baseball bat before being subdued.

“Another one,” Akira commented as he looked down on the board, considering. Goro just made a _hmm_ noise.

“You haven't thought about chasing them down?”

“Of course I have,” Goro replied, eyes also on the board. “They're just very elusive. If you have any leads, please, tell me.”

“So you're pretty sure it's someone using the Metaverse too, then.”

“I'm certain it is.”

Akira moved a pawn forward. “What do you think they're after?”

“...Could be working for someone,” Goro said after a pause, expression unreadable as usual. “For financial or political gain. Or maybe they're just angry at the world and want to hurt people to see what happens.”

“That sounds like you projecting.”

Goro looked up from the board to glare at him, but said nothing.

“You know you can tell Doctor Akira anything,” Akira said with an obnoxious grin.

Goro didn't tell him much. He mentioned that his mother had killed herself, she had been a hostess, and his father had been a client, and he'd dumped the both of them before Goro had been born. He'd skimmed vaguely over his childhood in the care system, and Akira could connect the dots well enough there. He spoke of it in a detached manner, like he didn't care, but it was pretty obvious that was a front.

Akira didn't know why he was so desperate to learn about Goro, now. He had this weird sense like it was his responsibility—like if he didn't, then something bad would happen, and it would be his fault _(again)_.

“You are so obnoxious,” was all Goro said as he captured one of Akira's castles.

“Ahh, no need to be so defensive, Goro. See, that reaction is all just about fear. You don't want to open up to me because you're afraid I'll turn it against you,” Akira said, knocking over one of Goro's bishops in retaliation. “And you know why that is?”

“Please do lecture me on your bullshit armchair psychology.”

Akira leaned forward, batted his eyelashes, and grinned. “Because you're madly in love with me and you couldn't handle being rejected.”

Goro's face scrunched up into the most bitter scowl of the day, and he just stared at Akira for a long, hard minute, lips twisting as if he'd swallowed something nasty. Then he looked back down at the board, made a move with his queen. “Checkmate. I told you I was going to win.” Then he shoved the board over, knocking over half pieces, and looked down at his briefcase, going for his papers. “Clean up that board, it's in the way and I have to do work.”

Akira cleaned up the board and tucked it away on the shelf, then went back to the kitchen to check on the curry that was almost done.

He served out a plate of rice and curry to Goro, who had his laptop out, then remembered to take the book he'd borrowed from Goro a while ago out of his back and stick it back in the shelf. _No Longer Human._

“Oh yeah,” Goro said without looking up when Akira slotted the book back into the shelf. “Take that one, too, I'm done with it.”

Akira picked up the _Sherlock Holmes_ book off the couch and took it back to his bag. “You've run through my entire collection,” he commented.

“They're fun,” Goro said, then dove back into his work.

Standing by the door about to get his shoes on, Akira pondered sticking around to harass Goro more. He also pondered diving into Goro's bed and waiting there for him naked, and having those thoughts meant it was definitely time to go. There were plenty of dicks in the world that weren't attached to bloodthirsty vigilantes with an impressive list of unaddressed emotional issues. Akira checked his phone, scrolling through his list of available hook-up options. He was in the mood for cock, and way too horny to not get some of that tonight. That was the great thing about Tokyo—dicks everywhere. Akira had gained all sorts of experience since he'd settled in here.

It wasn't like he had anyone else to fill his time.

“Enjoy your work,” Akira said as he walked out, not waiting for a reply.

x x x

After a brief adventure at a love hotel that at least got the intrusive thoughts of Goro's ass out of his head, Akira was wandering around Kichijoji when he heard his phone ding. He experienced a moment of dizziness and leaned his face on his hand for a moment, then lifted his head again.

Looking up at the sky, he felt a breeze blow past. You'd think that would be nice, given it was September and still quite warm, but the breeze felt like nothing at all.

Suddenly, he recalled that time a few months back when he had been walking through this same area and had seen that strange cosplayer. It hadn't hit him at the time because it had been before he'd ever learned about the Metaverse, but didn't that mean he'd been on the other side—and that person had been a persona user?

Akira pulled out his phone and checked the nav. He was indeed in the other world, but on the display where it would have listed the palace owner, it just read, _nobody._

Nobody? Not like, a collective consciousness thing, but nobody?

And how the heck had he just stumbled in here for no reason?

Now that he thought about it, how had he stumbled into that mine palace the first time, for no reason? Staring at his phone, Akira wondered, not for the first time, just who—or what—was pulling the strings, here.

x x x

“So why did you want me to come here?” Goro asked, following Akira's gaze up into the sky over Kichijoji. The shadow crowds bustled on the streets around them as they stood there.

“I just wondered what your thoughts were about this place,” Akira said, hands in his pockets as he looked around. It looked just like Kichijoji—there was nothing different about it at all that Akira could tell. Maybe the wind was blowing a little harder, and something about it kind of wigged him out, but that may have been his imagination.

“Who knows? It's not as if I know everything about this world,” Goro shrugged, and he started walking again. The two of them strolled casually through this other space as if it were the real world.

“I thought these cognitive fields are based on distortions, that's what gets me.”

“It could just be something small or difficult to notice.”

“I walked around the whole area and couldn't find anything, though,” Akira said. “And the nav says it belongs to _nobody_.”

Goro folded his arms and seemed to be considering, but shook his head and sighed. “Maybe you could find something through more thorough investigation, but it doesn't seem worth it. The shadows here aren't aggressive, and the master doesn't even view us as a threat.” Goro gestured to their regular, unchanged attire. “So why bother?”

“You don't want to get to the bottom of this, Ace Detective?” Akira teased.

“I am somewhat curious, but...even if I found out who the master was here, so what? Would you have me kill them to get rid of the distortion? I don't know anything about them.”

“Aren't people with distortions basically all fucked up bastards?”

Goro's gaze shifted slightly away from Akira, to the lines of shops that were just like the real world. “They're all fucked-up bastards, but some...are mostly harmless. It depends what their desires are.”

Akira decided not to probe. He didn't really need to know the details about every fucked-up bastard in Tokyo. “Why do you think the shadows here aren't aggressive?”

Goro shrugged. “The personality of the owner. They could be someone who is generally not very aggressive. Or perhaps they're only aggressive toward certain people. This isn't the first place I've been where the shadows don't attack. Sometimes, the individual uses other means to protect themselves. They might hide somewhere incredibly secure, and it's about searching for them—it's less about ripping open their heart and more about unlocking it, I guess you could say.”

“Unlocking it, huh...” Akira walked along in silence for a while, observing the streets around them. “Hey, Goro, do you think—”

When Akira didn't finish, Goro turned to him. “What?” Then he noticed what Akira was looking at.

Walking along through the crowds just ahead of them were cognitive versions of Akira and Goro.

“Well, being that we're here right now, it makes sense for our cognitive versions to also be in the same place,” Goro pointed out, but Akira was already walking toward the cognitions.

“Aren't you a bit curious about them?” Akira said, following after the two shadows. “If we know how the owner of this distortion sees us, that will give us a hint as to who it is, right?”

“Yeah, but...” Goro sighed, though he followed after Akira anyway. “I can't say I really care.”

“C'mon, I know you like _Sherlock Holmes._ Think of this as a mystery.”

Goro rolled his eyes. “I have better things to be doing right now.”

The cognitive Akira and Goro superficially looked just like the real thing, chatting as they strolled down the street, occasionally looking into shop windows, in no particular hurry to get anywhere. The cognitive Goro was smiling like he generally did in public, while cognitive Akira mostly just listened to him talk. The real Akira and Goro followed them a couple meters back, hidden behind the crowds.

“It could be literally anyone who sees us like that,” Goro pointed out, keeping his voice low so as to not be heard by the cognitions. “There's nothing really distinctive about them.”

“So you act all pleasant like that around everyone but me, huh?” Akira asked, still watching the pair of shadows. “I feel so special.”

“...I met you in...unique circumstances. I wasn't thinking. I just figure there's no point in trying to act that way to you now.”

“But there is a point in acting that way to everyone else?”

“Of course. If you want to get what you want, you'll catch more flies with honey.”

Akira's mouth twisted slightly, but privately, he thought Goro was right, and he'd never needled Goro about his behavior before because it made sense to him. With most people, Akira kept his mouth shut more often than not, and when he did speak, he was always mindful of how people would hear it. Though well, lately, he'd been more loose-lipped around Goro. One of these days, he was going to slip and say something stupid.

“No honey for me, huh?” Akira said, tone teasing.

Goro turned to give him a dead-eyed look. Then he broke into a bright smile. “Aha-ha, would you like some honey? Maybe I could manage that...”

“...Please don't. I think I like you better when you act like an asshole.”

Goro didn't reply, and Akira looked over to see his face was turned away, his hand up by his neck to rub his cheek as if he were trying to hide it.

“...Anyway,” Goro said after an awkward silence, “Can we go? We're running out of time to go the train station.”

 _The train station,_ between them, always meant one place.

“Yeah, let's go, then.”

But as they left, Akira took one last glance back at the cognitive versions of themselves. He couldn't quite put his finger on how, but the version of him just seemed slightly off. It was uncanny.

_Am I really like that?_

x x x

When Akira and Goro came out of the shadowy train station, Akira ran right into Sumire.

“Ah!” She seemed startled, just about dropping her athletic bag when Akira bumped into her, stumbling back a couple steps. He hadn't even noticed she was there. She had her hair down again, and her glasses on. He got the feeling that she'd been wearing a ponytail a lot at school, lately, when she was with her friends. Maybe it was in memory of Kasumi.

“Sumire. Oh, sorry. Are you okay?”

She smiled when he said her name, but she seemed anxious. “Y-yeah, I'm all right...” She adjusted her bag over her shoulder, looking awkwardly to the side. “Funny running into you here. ...What a coincidence.”

“Yeah, I haven't seen you in a while.” Akira said, internally wincing. He'd been actively avoiding her, and there was no covering that now. Well, it wasn't like she'd made an effort to communicate with him, either. Kasumi had always been the one to actively reach out, while Sumire was...an add-on. And maybe deep down, she blamed him, the way everyone else did.

“...Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “And we used to hang out all the time...” She was looking at the ground. “I feel like you spend a lot of time with Akechi-senpai these days.”

Akira's gaze slid over to Goro. He was standing off to the side, on his phone.

“Yeah...” Akira reached up to fiddle with his hair. He didn't really want to explain to her why he hadn't been in contact. She could figure out that much.

But looking at her face, he felt guilty. Kasumi had told him that Sumire didn't really have any other friends, so she always made sure to bring Sumire with her for everything, and make her own friends Sumire's friends. And lately, Akira had seen Sumire hanging around with Kasumi's friends—they seemed to actively come to her...but she didn't seem happy with them. They would all be chattering around her with cheerful faces while she stood in the middle of the group with a forced smile. Akira wondered if she liked spending time with them at all.

And now Kasumi, the one person Sumire had actually been close to, was gone, and Akira had basically ditched Sumire at a time when she probably had more to deal with than he did.

The realization of his shittiness did not feel good.

“I do miss spending time with you,” Akira said. “It's just been...” He made a conscious effort to pull his hand away from his hair and act more calm about this than he was. “How about we go somewhere, later this week?”

“Huh?” Sumire looked up, startled.

“Yeah, how about...the aquarium?” Akira said the first thing that popped into his mind.

“The aquarium?” She just looked up at him like she hadn't quite processed this. She was silent for a few seconds, eyes wide and slowly going pink. “U-um, sure!”

“Or if you'd prefer someplace else...”

“N-no, the aquarium is fine.” Her voice reduced to a near-whisper, Sumire was looking at the ground again, nodding at the pavement.

“I haven't been to the aquarium in a long time.”

Akira practically jumped with suddenly, Goro cut into their conversation. Goro looked at Sumire, then at Akira with a sunny smile. “I hope it wouldn't be too intrusive for me to come too?” He turned his thousand-watt smile back toward Sumire, and she shrank under the power of it.

“The more, the merrier...” Sumire mumbled.

So they arranged the date and time—or rather, Goro basically took control of that and decided for them.

“Great!” He beamed at them both, then pulled out his phone and checked the time. “Oh, I must off. I'll see you on the weekend, then.” And he swept off before Akira could say another word. ...Not like he'd really know what to say.

_What the hell was that about?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Akira and Sumire go on an aquarium date and Goro viciously third-wheels it in attempt to cockblock Akira~


	9. Shark and Penguin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we start getting to the juicy bits. You know my original impetus for this was just doing more Royal Trio interactions, because I love the section of 3S where it's just the three of them. Everything up to this was just set-up, now we're getting to the shit I actually came here to write, lol. I can't believe I've written like 30k words of blue-balling myself. The filth comes soon...soon!!

On the day they were supposed to go to the aquarium, Akira was surprised to see Goro just show up at his apartment unannounced.

“I figure we could go there together,” Goro said. “Since I was in the area.”

Goro was usually really committed to sweater vests, even at the peak of summer, but today he was just wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt with the top couple buttons open. Akira privately thought he looked more attractive that way, but he wasn't going to say so.

The train ride there was weirdly silent. Akira was okay saying nothing, but seeing Goro be so unusually silent made it weirdly awkward.

When they arrived, Sumire was waiting by the entrance, staring at the ground vacantly until Akira approached her, and when he called her name, “Sumire,” she finally smiled. Her hair was down, and she was wearing her glasses again, and she looked decisively different from how she was at school. Akira preferred her this way—it was kind of a relief when she resembled Kasumi less. They paid for their entrance, and went inside.

“I figure we start with the tropical room and go from there along the route,” Goro said, and neither Sumire nor Akira were the type to argue, so they headed off to the tropical room.

“Oh, these jellyfish are so pretty,” Sumire oohed as she and Akira looked up at a column tank filled with drifting translucent jellyfish. “They have such delicate tentacles.”

Goro came up beside her and looked at the card with the species description. “These are some of the most deadly jellyfish in the world, actually. A sting from one is excruciatingly painful, and left untreated a victim will die in two to five minutes,” he supplied helpfully. “The amount of venom in one jelly is enough to kill sixty humans.”

“O-oh, that's very interesting...” Sumire looked away.

Akira looked over at the creature info and saw that Goro wasn't just reading off the card. He was bringing up new information. “You know about ocean life?”

“Aha-ha,” Goro laughed that ingratiating laugh of his. “Just a few facts here and there.”

As they wandered from the tropical to the pacific room, Goro continued to bring out an impressive array of fish facts. Things like:

“This species is just about extinct, you know. They're saying in all likelihood, the last of them will die in captivity within the next ten years.”

Or, “This particular species of sea slug are intensely toxic, and they never live more than a year. Is it their own poison slowly killing them, I wonder...”

Or, “The Hadal zone, at depths past six thousand meters, is named after Hades, the Greek hell. The pressure is so intense, a human would be instantly crushed, and it's pitch-dark...”

“W-wow, Akechi-senpai, you sure know a lot,” Sumire said as they all stood in front of a tank in the deep sea room, the smile on her face even more fake than the one Goro was making.

Under the glow of the bio-luminescent fish, Goro's self-effacing grin seemed particularly eerie. “Aha, not really. I've just done a little reading.”

Akira restrained a snort at Goro's blatant false modesty.

When they came out of the deep sea room into the light again, Akira pulled out the aquarium guide pamphlet. “Did you guys want to see one of the shows? There's one coming up at twelve, and another at one.”

“Ohh, I want to see the dolphins! Or maybe the penguins...” Sumire perked up. She'd kind of seemed uncomfortable all through the deep sea room...well, it was full of some pretty creepy fish.

“The dolphin show looks like fun,” Akira nodded, and they started off.

“Did you know dolphins are some of the most violent creatures in the ocean?” Goro informed them as they walked down the hallway to the dolphin show. “Male dolphins will use all kinds of tactics to get a female to mate with them, including killing her calf to bring her into estrus again. It seems even the animal world has its share of nasty fathers.”

Akira shot him a look, which Goro ignored.

“Well, nature can be cruel, but it can also be kind...” Akira said, hoping to steer Goro away from this topic. His eyes flicked over to Sumire and her wilting smile.

Goro, however, was not fazed. “Gangs of male dolphins will surround a female, beating her with their tails and forcing her to mate. They'll even do this to other species such as porpoises, forcibly mating with her and then beating her to death. So there's not even any evolutionary purpose to it, it's just purely for pleasure. And because they're so intelligent, they can pinpoint the location of vulnerable organs to do the most damage.”

At least he wasn't smiling when he supplied this factoid.

Sumire drooped as she looked at the dolphin pamphlet. “I'm not sure I like dolphins so much anymore...”

“Dolphins are smart, so they're a lot like people,” Akira said to Sumire, shooting a glare at Goro. “There are good people and bad people out there. You can't judge them all based off a few isolated incidents.”

“Good people and bad people, hmm?” Goro muttered, burying his face in his pamphlet. “That's a bit of a simplistic view.”

Akira just rolled his eyes and did not engage.

When they got to the dolphin show, Goro gestured for Sumire to go down the aisle to the open seating first, while he went next, leaving Akira to come up last and take a seat to Goro's left, while Sumire was on his right.

Sumire did seem to enjoy the dolphin show, though, despite her reaction to Goro's dolphin facts. Goro—who knew what he was thinking, though he did put on a show of watching with interest.

“It's impressive how well trained they are! They're so smart,” Sumire said afterwards as the crowds were filing out of the seating area.

“If you consider doing what you're told a sign of intelligence, I suppose,” Goro said.

Akira did not comment.

The star piece of this aquarium was a massive central tank that had a whale shark, as well as some smaller sharks and fish all together.

“Any shark facts, Goro?” Akira asked when they approached the big tank, and Goro came up beside him. “Like aren't they supposed to die if they stop swimming or whatever?”

“That's only true for some sharks,” Goro stepped up to the glass between Akira and Sumire. “Others pass water through their respiratory system via a pumping motion of the pharynx. ...But many survive just fine, never stopping. It's not like it's a drawback.”

“It'd be kind of scary, though,” Sumire said as she looked into the tank. “Wouldn't you think about your own death all the time?”

“I don't think sharks are that smart,” Akira pointed out. “They're probably just thinking about their next meal.”

“Sharks are often perceived as being dangerous creatures,” Goro continued, coming up the the glass and putting his hands on it to get a better look at the fish, “but in fact, you're more likely to die of lightning strike than shark attack, and a shark is more likely to be killed by humans than the other way around. They're something of a victim of a bad reputation. That whale shark here...” Goro jerked his chin in the direction of the big shark high above them—“is a filter feeder. They pose no threat at all to humans.”

“...Some sharks are dangerous, though,” Sumire said.

“Doesn't that make them more exciting?” Akira leaned against the glass, following Goro's gaze into the water.

Nobody answered that.

“...Do you like sharks, Akechi-senpai?”

Goro seemed a little surprised to be addressed by Sumire. She'd hardly said anything to him that day, aside from the minimal polite greetings. “...Yes, I suppose I do. If I could be reincarnated, maybe a shark would be nice. It would be better than being human, anyway.”

“...Better than being human?” Akira asked, turning toward him.

“I mean, you know—” Goro said with a bright smile at him before turning back to the tank. “Sharks are adaptable, and they can survive in extreme environments. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They've taken whatever the world has thrown at them for millions of years, far longer than humans have ever existed. Maybe once human civilization is gone, there will still be sharks.”

“...Hmm,” Sumire said, the lights from the tank reflecting water lines over the complicated expression on her face.

x x x

On the way to the penguin show seating, Sumire tripped over the ledge that was right around the seating area, and Akira caught her hand, making sure she wouldn't fall. “Watch out,” he said, then guided her to an open seat, and Goro followed after them.

“Ah, sorry.” When they were sitting, Akira realized he was still holding her hand, and released it.

“I-it's okay,” Sumire blushed and looked down at her bag, on her feet.

The show got started. The watched the penguins eat fish and flap on command, and dive into the water and such while the trainer told them about penguin habitat and how they rear chicks and such.

“Penguins seem just uselessly awkward at first glance,” Sumire said after the show was over, “But they're totally different when they're in their element, huh? It's like night and day, between on land and in the water. They're actually really agile and graceful.”

“And they're cute,” Akira added, and that got a faint smile and weak chuckle out of Sumire.

“Yes, and they're cute.”

Goro didn't say anything for the duration of the show.

x x x

They had lunch in the aquarium cafe around a small round table—they served burgers and fries here, of all things.

“You'd think sushi would be more on-theme,” Akira said.

“That would be a little awkward, don't you think? ...Though I am eating fish, here...” Sumire said with an embarrassed look as she dove into her salad and grilled salmon combo. She said she avoided deep-fried food. “I feel strangely guilty about it, now.”

“Nothing weird about Japanese eating fish,” Akira pointed out, and a shy smile slipped from Sumire's lips.

“True.”

There was something strangely appealing about the way Goro took his gloves off to eat, though he took a picture of his food first. “I don't have burgers often,” he said as explanation.

“No Macdo or Mosburger for you?” Akira said as he munched a fry.

“When you say Macdo, I can tell you're not from Tokyo,” Goro said with a bright smile, then he looked down at his fries, his expression not wavering one inch as he popped one in his mouth. “I went to Mac a lot when I was a kid. ...They had all those _Featherman_ toy sets,” was all he said, and Akira knew not to probe further—in public, at least.

“...Do you like _Featherman,_ Akechi-senpai?” Sumire asked him. The second time that day she'd addressed him.

Goro didn't answer right away. He put a fry in his mouth and chewed it for a long moment, not speaking until he was done and had swallowed. Why the hell was he taking so long to answer? Akira knew he loved _Featherman._ Was it that embarrassing?

“I did, when I was a kid.”

“I think it's okay to still like the things you liked as a child,” Sumire said. She was looking down at the table, but there was an unusual strength in her voice. “And those sorts of stories about heroism are always meaningful, no matter how old you are.”

Goro laughed. Akira recognized it as the laugh he used to cover up awkward silences. “Oh, that's one way of looking at it, I suppose,” he said, in a way Akira knew meant _I think that's total bullshit._

“I still like _Featherman,_ ” Akira said, toying with a fry.

“Really? Which is your favorite?” Sumire turned to ask him.

“I mean, I like the one that's running now, _R._ ”

“Ohh, me too! The stunts are really great. You know a girl from my gym was cast as one of the stunt doubles.”

“Really?”

“Yes, she's fantastic, she's doing the stunts for Pink Argus. I got to see her doing some of the moves the other day, and it was like...” Sumire started gesturing and explaining what the whole routine was. She really cheered up when she was talking about gymnastics, and Akira let her talk. She hadn't been smiling much lately, and when she did, it was blatantly forced and out of politeness. It was nice to see her genuinely excited and passionate about something—she looked just like Kasumi when she was talking about what she loved. And not in a bad way, for once.

“...I'm going to the bathroom,” Goro said at some point, and while he was gone, Sumire continued talking about gymnastics for a bit before she brought up something else.

“Do you think Akechi-senpai doesn't like me?” she asked, looking down at the table.

Akira scratched at his cheek awkwardly. _Akechi-senpai doesn't like anybody,_ he thought, but he couldn't say that. “What makes you think that?”

“I don't know... I just get that impression.” She paused, fiddling with her remaining fries. “I wonder what it is about me that's bothering him.” Her eyes flicked up toward Akira's, then down at her food again. “Are you two close?”

“Ah...” Akira got the feeling she'd asked him a similar question before. Put on the spot, he answered without really thinking. “Sometimes I think we are, but I don't know. At the very least, I know him more intimately than anyone else.”

“...You don't know?”

Akira leaned his head on his hand, looking off at nothing. “I'm not sure it's possible for him to be close to anyone.” Then he realized what had just come out of his mouth and waved a hand. “I'm babbling, what do I know? His business is his business.”

“...Hmm.” Sumire got that complicated expression again. She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then closed it again.

Goro returned shortly after that, and since the day was winding down, they saw a few things to finish off the day, then headed for the gift shop.

They scanned the aisles of ocean-themed keychains, mugs, shirts and plushes, pointing out interesting items and such. Akira wasn't really planning to buy anything, but it was fun to look.

Akira came up behind Goro when he was holding a weirdly fluffy whale shark. “Cute,” Akira said, and Goro jumped in surprise, jerking away from him.

“Wh-what?” Goro seemed weirdly flustered.

“That shark.” Akira nodded at the plush in his hands. “You wouldn't normally think of a shark as cute, but they make it cute.”

“Aha-ha...” Goro laughed, looking down at the plush shark. “I think...I like the more realistic ones...”

“Yeah, those are good, too,” Akira nodded, then walked off toward where Sumire was looking at keychains.

“These jellyfish keychains have lights that turn all sorts of colors, just like the bio-luminescent jellyfish!” Sumire said. “But oh, I already have so many keychains...”

“How about this?” Akira picked up a fuzzy jellyfish hat with long dangling tendrils, putting it on his head.

“I think you should wear that around all day, Akira,” Goro said with a nasty grin, and Sumire giggled.

“It suits you,” she agreed.

Sumire circled back to the more popular plushes: the otters and seals and such. “Oh, this is just like that one penguin in the show, the one with the mark on its face!” she said as she held up a plush penguin. “It's so cute...” She waffled over it for a while, but then finally put it down. “They're kind of expensive, and I really don't need it...”

Without thinking much of it, Akira picked one of the penguins up and headed for the register.

“Huh?! No, you don't have to, really!” Sumire protested, but in the end, Akira bought her the penguin, and she walked out of the store with the penguin in a bag, blushing in embarrassment. “You really didn't have to...”

“I've made some extra money from my part-time job,” Akira said with a shrug. “I don't have anything better to spend it on.” This was true enough. But he had kind of forced it on her. Maybe it was just a guilt purchase. He felt like he had to make it up to her—he had a lot of things to make up to her.

Once they were outside the aquarium, Goro said, “Well, I had a fun time. Invite me if you ever have another one of these outings.”

“Yeah,” Sumire nodded while looking awkwardly at the ground, her gift shop bag held in both hands in front of her.

“We should hang out at school more,” Akira said to Sumire. “Let's have lunch again.”

“Yeah!” Sumire nodded, this time, more enthusiastically. She hesitated before adding, “...And you too, Akechi-senpai.”

 _He doesn't want to be seen with me at school, though,_ Akira thought with more than slight bitterness.

“...I might take you up on that. Though I'm usually busy with extra studying at lunch.”

 _What?_ Akira's eyes slid over to Goro, examining him, but saw nothing.

“...I should get going, though, I have work to do,” Goro said, but even after saying that, he paused, looking at Akira, then Sumire, then back at Akira again. “...See you later.” Then he stalked off very suddenly, and didn't look back when Akira waved and said goodbye.

“...I-I should get going too, Senpai,” Sumire said. “Thank you for the penguin.” She didn't go quite immediately, though. “Maybe...” She opened her mouth, then shook her head. “Never mind. Bye.” And then she left like she was running away, rushing off to the station.

Left standing there alone, Akira scratched his head, thinking back on the whole day.

_Well, that was really fucking weirdly awkward._

x x x

Not long after that, Akira was wandering around Kichijoji after school when without even realizing it, he stepped into that mysterious distortion again.

He checked his phone. There were no keywords associated with this distortion—or maybe it was just “nobody” that was the keyword. When he came here, he occasionally just slipped into the distortion. It was as if...it were welcoming him.

Figuring he had nothing better to do, Akira decided to wander around the area again. He didn't think he'd find any clues, but you never knew.

Idly walking along the street, looking around as he went, a familiar face caught his eye—a very familiar face. It was himself—or rather, a yellow-eyed cognitive version of himself sitting on the sidewalk seating of a cafe with a similarly yellow-eyed Goro Akechi.

Akira leaned against the side of the building, turned away from the two of them, and pulled out his phone so it looked like he was doing something.

The two of them were chatting—about Jung, of all things. How meta. And who would know that Jung was something they would chat about? Or did this distortion even belong to an individual at all?

There wasn't anything that the cognitive Akira said that Akira could say for sure he would strictly never say, but the overall impression was...nice. Really _nice._ Was Akira that nice? He sure didn't think of himself as that...gentle? Sweet? ...Princely? He wondered if he came off that way to other people. Or maybe this was simply the difference between seeing someone from the inside and the outside. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

The Goro, he felt, was pretty on point for Public Goro. Superficially pleasant, smarmy, fake modest, and passive-aggressive as fuck. And the two of them chatted like Akira and Goro did when they were in public. Cognitive Akira even teasingly flirted with Goro, who reacted with exasperation.

Which again begged the question of what sort of mind these cognitions came from.

“Oh, damn, look at the time,” cognitive Akira said after they had been chatting a while.

“Where are you going?” cognitive Goro asked.

“Hot date, of course,” cognitive Akira said, and the real Akira suppressed a snort. Was he actually that obnoxious? ...Yes, yes he was.

“Very funny, Akira,” cognitive Goro replied. “All right, I won't take any more of your time. See you later.”

When it became apparent cognitive Akira was leaving the cafe, the real Akira scooted around the corner so he'd be out of view (who knew what sort of cognitive nonsense could be caused by his cognition seeing him), putting away his phone as he leaned against the back alley wall and went through all the facts he knew so far.

The cognitive Akira and cognitive Goro here were very detailed and true to life—so much so that Akira would think this distortion belonged to someone who knew both of them quite well. So if it was someone, it was someone close to him. But then there was the possibility that this space was something else.

What else? The location. Kichijoji. What was here? Were there any locations here that were meaningful, somehow? ...The temple? Maybe he should go along the main street and start noting locations.

Akira was so lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice the cognitive Goro approach until he was right in front of him.

“I thought you were leaving,” cognitive Goro accused, his mouth turning in that familiar frown. “You weren't lying to me, were you?”

And then, before Akira could think up how to reply, cognitive Goro stepped toward him, his hands slamming against the wall on either side of his face. “I hate it when you make jokes like that,” he said.

“Huh?” Stunned, that was all that would come out of Akira's mouth.

“ _Hot date, of course_ ,” cognitive Goro sneered. “You should know you're mine.” And then he grabbed Akira by the jaw and kissed him.

The cognitive Goro's mouth was every bit as hot as Akira had imagined the real one to be, the pressure of his kiss bruising. The shock hadn't at all worn off, but Akira found himself kissing back, wrapping his arms around the cognitive Goro's waist, arching into him, and he wasn't thinking about _anything_ right now, just letting Goro tug open the collar of his polo shirt, lean down, and bite and suck at his neck. “Mine,” Goro murmured against his skin, and then he bit him again, hard enough to draw blood. “Now everyone will know.”

“F-fuck,” Akira moaned, clinging to Goro's blazer. He had desperately underestimated how badly he wanted this, and he was inches away from making all sorts of bad decisions.

Cognitive Goro slid is leg between Akira's, grinding their crotches together, and Akira stopped giving a fuck about anything except pressing himself as close against the other boy as possible. Goro's lips moved up his neck, mouthed over his ear. His breath was hot, too hot.

“You'd better love me, or I'll fucking kill you and then myself,” he murmured.

Akira froze.

His heart was rattling in his chest. He was terrified. He heard gunshots, two gunshots. Far away.

Without even thinking, Akira shoved the cognitive Goro away and ran.

He shoved his way through the crowds of Kichijoji, not really knowing where he was going or why. At some point, the shadow crowds turned to real crowds, but Akira didn't care, kept shoving his way through.

He got to the station, rushed through the ticket gates to go to the station bathroom, wrenching open a stall to practically collapse onto the toilet, gasping for air as he shoved the door closed in front of him.

He felt like he was crazy. But he knew—a deep part of him _knew_ that what the cognitive Goro had said was the absolute damn truth, and not just a jealous and mildly psychotic exaggeration.

He'd fucked it up. He was fucking it up. He'd made a terrible mistake, and he had to fix it. He had to figure out Goro, to—love him? Could he even do that? Was that enough? No. Maybe nothing was enough.

He had this powerful sense that he had to know everything about Goro, but he didn't know why.

Once his breathing had calmed, Akira came out of the stall and checked himself in the bathroom mirror. He tugged down his collar to look at his neck—the mark the cognitive Goro had made was still there.

Tugging his collar up, Akira rubbed his neck over his shirt as he left the train station bathroom.

x x x

That night, when Akira woke up in a blue prison, his first thought was, _they put me here for killing Kasumi._

He heard a clanging sound and cringed. He expected someone to be beating the bars, telling him just how much he deserved to be here. But there was no one.

He'd spent the past couple weeks denying to anyone who approached him that she had been his girlfriend, as if that would absolve him of anything, as if anyone believed him.

And now Akira had made someone else take his place for the crime that was rightfully his: the crime of murder. _(Wait, hadn't he killed someone else, like this? He couldn't remember.)_

There was this weird hierarchy in his mind, and lately, he had come to realize that in fact, some lives were more valuable than others, and that some random criminal scum meant nothing to him. Kasumi, Kasumi he knew he was responsible for, and every time he saw Sumire's face, it hit him again. He wanted to make everything up to Sumire, but he also never wanted to see her again.

But even the fact the he thought of the shadows he had killed as “random criminal scum” was a problem, wasn't it? He should feel worse. He _should_ feel bad about this. This was the real proof of his guilt, wasn't it, that he didn't feel guilty enough.

He didn't think about these things when he was in in the other world with Goro. Those times were exciting and nothing else.

It was this place giving him these thoughts. This prison. What the hell was this place?

The door to his cell creaked open on its own, and Akira stood up. There were chains on his wrists and ankles, but they weren't keeping him in the cell. So he wandered on out.

There was something strange and hazy about this room. There was a desk. It looked like it had been ransacked. All the drawers were open, the chair had been knocked over, and there were blue playing cards scattered everywhere.

Akira reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of blue cards. They matched.

He pawed through the cards on the desk. They all seemed so familiar, like they'd been his, before. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but there was something here he needed. Maybe a lot of things he needed. Maybe just one thing. He kept seeking it but not finding it, and there was nothing, nothing, nothing.

“I need them,” he murmured to himself as he clawed together a big pile of cards over the desk. “I need all of them. What do I have without them? Nothing.”

His head jerked up.

He thought he heard a sound like a falling axe, or maybe like the zap of electricity, or maybe like the sound of something heavy being yanked down. He looked around the room. It was strangely misty and unclear. He could see two other cells here, were there people inside? But he couldn't see who they were.

The deck from his pocket spilled onto the desk, cards scattering everywhere. Some of them glowed, two and three cards became one, and he picked up the new cards.

“This is right, isn't it? This was how it was supposed to go.”

There was no one here to answer his questions.

He wandered out of the circular room and through stone hallways filled with jail cells, each of them clouded so he couldn't see inside. It seemed desperately important to know who was inside these cells. He went up to each cell, trying to peer through the bars, rattled them, but they were locked tight, and he couldn't see a thing. So he went to the large wooden door that seemed to lead out of this prison.

He opened the door, and—


	10. King of Swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Went back to make some minor Sumire-related edits to add foreshadowing and correct some inconsistencies. If certain events yet to come seem mildly ass-pulled, well, it's 'cause I forgot to foreshadow. >_>;

Goro landed face-down onto the tangled mess of blankets on his bed and lay there for a good, long while.

“...Fuck me,” he muttered, voice muffled in the sheets that hadn't been washed since Akira had changed them.

He'd had a whole big plan for that trip to the aquarium that he'd known deep in his heart was bullshit and was never going to happen.

Basically, he never should have gone, but he would eat off his arm before he would let Akira be alone anywhere with that snivelling, pathetic Yoshizawa girl.

Was that his type, then? The sad, delicate flower who needed her hand held and a shoulder to cry on? Did that make him feel like a big, strong man? Akira really had zero standards, making a move on this girl when the sister he'd also been dating wasn't even cold in her grave. Fuck him, honestly.

Goro rolled over on his bed and stared up at the popcorn ceiling.

If he was being rational here, then the fundamental problem here was the presence of Akira Kurusu. Goro had manipulated Akira into helping him because it was honestly highly advantageous to have him around, and Goro figured he could get rid of him if and when the time came. And he continued to be an asset, so it wasn't like Goro was going to get rid of him yet.

But his presence was a problem. Akira Kurusu was a motherfucking _problem._

Goro would grant that Akira breaking into his apartment was fair retaliation, and he was more impressed than angered by that, weirdly enough. Akira wouldn't be cowed by a little intimidation, and Goro liked that. He'd initially thought he could just strong-arm Akira into doing whatever he wanted, but Akira gave back as good as he got. It was fun.

The problem with him was—Goro paused in his thoughts to try to arrange them in a list. There were too many problems.

Akira was, first and foremost, an arrogant fuck. He believed that everyone liked him and wanted to spend time with him, and that he was doing them a favor by offering his presence. How the hell he could maintain that delusional belief when half the school avoided him like the plague because they thought he was a murderer, Goro had no idea, but Akira sure acted that way.

And so Akira had no boundaries. He considered it his right to intrude on Goro's apartment, paw through his books and fill his fridge with whatever he wanted. Goro could literally kill him any time he wanted, he'd _explicitly_ threatened that and he was fully willing to follow through, but Akira's only reaction was a little smirk and a, _sure, go ahead_ sort of look. As if the idea actually _excited_ him.

Goro wanted to wipe that smug smirk off his face—with his fist or with his lips, either would do.

It didn't matter that he wanted Akira. That, at least, he could handle. It was a suitable distraction, just to think about. It wasn't like Goro had any intention of making it actually happen—that was just unrealistic, and he didn't have time for it, and what would they even do, anyway? Go on cute little amusement park dates and come home with stuffed animals? Or just go out for a nice murder date and a celebratory fuck against the ticket gates of the other realm? Hot, but rather a ridiculous idea.

No, what galled him was the clear hierarchy in Akira's mind in which Goro clearly didn't even rank. How the hell could Akira place someone like _her_ over him? What the hell did she have that he didn't? Goro had thought, at first, that it was just because she was a girl. Goro could at least understand that, even having seen all the dick picks from other guys on Akira's phone. Goro wouldn't want that sort of stain on his image, either, so it would be pretty hypocritical of him to blame Akira for that.

So he was the kind of guy who had a pretty girlfriend to make himself look good while he secretly got random hookups with guys? That was a common enough story.

Goro wasn't even guilty about looking at Akira's phone. If Akira was going to pry into his private life, Goro would sure as hell look through his, and that included his contact list and his photo album. Akira was so careless about where he left his phone, it was like he wanted Goro to take a look so he could rub it in his face—it had to be deliberate. He was saying, _yeah, I get it all the time, unlike a certain someone. You jealous? You think I would bother with you?_

Goro hadn't checked every single contact in that list, but he'd scribbled down some numbers and made a few probing phone calls. He got the gist of it.

Once his brain had moved on to imagining Akira naked on a bed in some random love hotel with some random guy, Goro decided to stop wasting time and get up.

Tossing off his dress shirt—mildly sickened that he'd picked this one because it flattered him and he wanted Akira looking—Goro changed into an old T-shirt and sweatpants, then went into the living room to sit down on the floor in front of his laptop on the coffee table, opening it up.

When he launched his browser, though, he was greeted by all those tabs from Wikipedia and educational sites on ocean life where he'd spent half the night on a pointless research binge in attempt to avoid looking like an idiot the next day, an attempt that he had most certainly failed. Smacking the mouse more aggressively than was strictly necessary, Goro closed all the tabs.

He'd had this idea that if he maneuvered things right, he could direct Akira's attention away from Yoshizawa, to keep them from getting closer. And at least he'd kept them from having the perfect lovey-dovey date where they held hands and tittered and gazed into each others' eyes and Akira took her back to his place at the end for a bunch of wholesome vanilla sex in the missionary position. It was gratifying that he'd turned their date into a completely awkward disaster, all else aside. Goro was good at ruining things.

But it wasn't like it was anything he'd done per se that had ruined the date. Yoshizawa and Akira got along, just watching them talk, that was obvious enough, and they'd been holding back out of consideration for him. Yoshizawa had shot him concerned glance after concerned glance, as if he _wanted_ any of her fucking consideration.

And it had been hard, hard to watch the two of them make googly eyes at each other while they talked about fucking _Featherman_ of all things, Akira with this delicate look of concern like anything that touched on his childhood would make him burst into tears, while Yoshizawa made a brilliant show of sweet naivete that clearly turned Akira on, because they wound up only having eyes for each other for a good while after that, and then Shido had texted him saying he wanted to talk, and Goro knew what that was about, so he'd spent a good few minutes in the bathroom trying to fucking calm down about it, only to come back to hear Akira saying to Yoshizawa, “I'm not sure if it's possible for him to be close to anyone.”

It was clear who Akira had been talking about, there. And it was true enough.

It was Goro's fault that hurt. It was ridiculous to be hurt by a statement of fact. He just had to get over it.

And then in the gift shop. It would have been forgivable if Yoshizawa hadn't given him that _look._ It was obvious she just saw right through his whole ploy, and she wasn't even mad—she had every _right_ to be mad, why the hell didn't she resent him for fucking up her date, for trying to drive her off? Goro had been irritated with her the whole time for just lying down and taking it while Akira would swoop in and protect her like her fucking savior, and only then, in the gift shop, had he realized why she hadn't fought him. Why she hadn't needed to.

She _pitied_ him.

Look at her, trying to refuse that fucking penguin out of consideration for _Goro,_ as if he was someone who needed it. As if she had a place above him to look down on him. She'd seen him standing there crushing that shark plush in his hands and she'd known everything. All his jealousy and his malice and his desperation was laid bare, despite his attempts to hide it.

Goro was humiliated.

Humiliated that he'd ever entertained for a moment the ridiculous fantasy of coming here with Akira, just the two of them, of Akira smiling at him in that gentle way he did to Yoshizawa that Goro knew he didn't deserve, of Akira buying him some stupid gift that Goro would keep under his bed and pretend he didn't care about and then throw against the wall, then pick up and carefully replace later.

What if—what if he could tell Akira everything.

What a stupid thing to speculate over.

Goro was staring at his laptop, but he wasn't looking at it.

He tried to distract himself by thinking about fucking Akira, about pinning him to the bed and making him cry, but it just turned into a scene of Akira fucking Yoshizawa like some kind of porn star god, licking his lips with that arrogant grin of his while he hammered into her with divine stamina and gave her five consecutive orgasms.

Goro wiped the sticky mess on his hand on a tissue, left that on the table, tucked his dick away, and forced himself to get his work done.

x x x

 _It's a good thing Akira doesn't watch the news,_ Goro thought as he walked out of the other world, checking to make sure the area was clear before he emerged into full view of the public. He pulled out his phone, saw there was another message from Shido, and stuffed it back in his pocket before he could read it, a knot of anxiety coiling in his stomach. He'd look at it when he got home. It wasn't like he could answer right away, anyway.

He put off going home as long as he possibly could, stopping by the convenience store on the way to buy a bento for his dinner that he knew he wasn't going to eat and dawdling for a moment around the magazines, looking for any news about himself and frustratingly finding nothing.

Finally, he couldn't put it off any longer, and headed home, took off his shoes, dropped the bento in its plastic bag on the kitchen counter, and pulled out his phone.

 **Call me,** the message read.

_I was going to call you anyway, you high-handed fuck._

Mashing his thumb against the screen, Goro brought up the contact fake-labeled as “Masa Sasaki” and called him.

“ _Are you done the job yet?”_

The asshole couldn't even be bothered with a _hello,_ as usual.

“Yes, it's done,” Goro said, consciously unclenching the fist that he'd made against the side of the counter. “You don't need to worry about this target.”

“ _Good.”_ Shido paused. It sounded like he was taking a drink. He was probably at home, then. He was usually in a better mood when he wasn't at work. _“Oh, the job you fucked up before turned out not to be as big a deal as I thought. So this should be enough for clean-up.”_

The job Goro “fucked up” before involved a target that Goro had berserked going on an unpredictable rampage. It didn't matter that these sorts of rampages were determined by the character of the individual and not by Goro's abilities—to Shido, it was still Goro's fault. So in order to cover up some unfortunate collateral damage done there, more work had been necessary.

“Oh, that's a relief,” was all Goro said there. If he said any more, he was bound to let slip something snide.

“ _Actually,”_ Shido continued, _“Thinking back, you've been doing some pretty good work, these past few months. You've gotten faster. More reliable than the cleaner, though that's a low bar. I'll send you a bonus. Wait for my next call.”_ And then he hung up.

It took Goro a moment. He just stood there with the phone against his ear, frozen, until all the tension just dropped out of his body and he fell back against the kitchen counter.

Had Shido ever said something like that to him, before? That he was reliable.

The strange feeling he couldn't name was quickly replaced by bitterness, though, when he realized that the reason for Shido's praise was, in fact, Akira. It wasn't like it was really _for_ Goro. Goro had just gotten faster because he'd roped Akira into helping him, unbeknownst to Shido.

...What did it matter, though? Shido thought he was doing well. He was gaining Shido's trust. That was all according to plan. As long as Shido needed him, it would all work out.

Then why did he feel like shit?

“Fuck!” Goro spun around to kick the cupboard, slamming his phone down on the counter. Why did it all come down to Akira, Akira, Akira. You could beat him at anything—Goro won eight out of ten chess games and ten out of ten fights in the other world, but it was like that didn't even matter, Akira just got up and swore he would win next time, you could never really make him _taste_ it—it never mattered. Admitting that he wanted Akira as badly as Akira clearly thought everyone wanted him would just be the worst kind of capitulation.

Goro had this. _He_ had Akira wound around his little finger. _He_ was the one using Akira for _his_ ends, keeping Akira in the dark about Loki and the other incidents he caused, embellishing the crimes of some of the targets Shido gave him so he could make it seem acceptable to Akira, and Akira was just too dumb to notice any of this because he didn't fucking watch the news. Goro was winning this. He _was._

So then why did it feel like he was losing?

Goro kicked the cabinet again, heard the wood crack. He wasn't getting his security deposit back now, not like he cared, it was all paid for with Shido's money, anyway.

He'd never questioned himself before. It had been fine when he'd just been on his own, and he hadn't had to think about what sorts of kills Akira would consider morally justified, and which kills would make him doubt Goro, make him say no.

It was the truth that Goro had engaged in some vigilantism, and he still did. That had been his original, rather naive plan of action, after he'd found out rather unintentionally what it meant to destroy a shadow. But a couple kills in, by means he still didn't quite understand, he'd been found by Wakaba Isshiki and the other researchers with ties to Shido, and well, one opportunity had led to another.

Leaning his palms against the granite countertop, Goro stared down at the crack he'd made in the cabinet, already regretting that kick.

What did Akira actually think of him?

For all his irritating blabbering, that was one thing he kept behind his teeth. At least Akira couldn't judge him for killing people, when his own hands were just as dirty, now. And Akira got off on the rush just as much as he did, Goro could see that clearly every time.

Did Akira think Goro was like a dark hero, with extreme methods but justice in his heart?

Goro almost laughed at himself at the thought.

What a stupid fantasy.

x x x

Akira had been coming over a lot, lately.

Goro stopped threatening to change the locks—it was just going to make him look like an idiot if he never followed through. And what was the point when Akira would just find a new way to break in, anyway? Whatever, let him do what he wanted.

Coming home late one night, Goro found yet again that his door was unlocked and his lights were on, and sighed in resignation.

“Learn to make something other than curry,” Goro grumbled as he took off his shoes, walked past Akira through the kitchen to flop down at the living room coffee table.

“You like curry, though,” he heard from behind him.

“...” Goro decided to ignore him and try to get some studying done, so he reached behind him onto the sofa for the math textbook he'd left there, and when his hand hit nothing, he realized that Akira had cleaned his damn apartment again.

“Where did you put my math textbook?” Goro snapped, getting up to start searching.

“All your school-related books are on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf, as usual, honey,” Akira called from the kitchen.

Scowling to himself, Goro crawled over to the bookshelf, grabbed the textbook and—wait.

“...What did you just say?”

“Bottom of the bookshelf.”

“After that.”

“As usual.”

“After _that._ ”

“Honey.”

The fact that Akira managed to say that in a totally deadpan voice was a testament to his acting skills. As a master in the craft, Goro could appreciate competence in that arena.

Throwing his textbook down on the couch, Goro spun around the dividing wall into the kitchen and saw Akira standing there totally unperturbed, ladle in hand as he stirred the curry with a completely straight expression.

“...What are you wearing.”

“An apron.”

“I can see that.” It was, to be precise, a pink apron dotted with little pancakes drizzled in syrup. Goro could not understand his taste.

“Are you disappointed I'm wearing clothes underneath it?” Akira's lips didn't so much as twitch.

After a moment of exasperated silence and an eye roll, Goro just said, “if you leave that hideous monstrosity behind in my apartment, I'm going to rip it up and use the shreds to clean the bathroom floor.”

“I know that's an empty threat, because you never clean the bathroom floor.”

Clicking his tongue, Goro went back to the sofa, sank into the cushions, opened up his math textbook, grabbed his notebook and pen from his briefcase, and went to studying.

Or he meant to.

Before long, Akira came in with a hot plate of curry in his hands, shuffling along in slippers like a housewife to lay it down on the coffee table.

“Here you go, honey. Finish up before it gets cold.”

Goro just stared at him.

“Is this...do you find this funny?” he said finally, still eyeing Akira with a dubious expression. Akira was standing there in a demure pose with his hands folded in front of him.

“Just trying to make you comfortable, honey. How was work? You always come back so late, I get worried...” Akira brought his hand up to his cheek in cutesy gesture, but the look on his face didn't change.

Goro stared. Akira stared back.

Goro broke first, and started eating the curry. It smelled good, and he was hungry.

“So how was work?” Akira repeated, sitting down daintily on the couch beside him.

“Are you high?” Goro asked, mouth full of curry.

“No, honey,” Akira said smoothly without missing a beat, “you know I would never go into your stash. I put it all in the curry.”

Goro choked, coughing up curry back onto his plate, and Akira scooched over on the couch to thump his back soothingly. As soon as Goro had his air, he shoved Akira's hand off and set the plate down on the coffee table.

“Okay, okay, whatever game you're playing here, you win,” Goro said, wiping his mouth. “What do you want? You're weirding me out.”

Akira finally let out a smirk, leaning back against the couch and relaxing into a full-on manspread. “Just having some fun with you.”

Goro sighed. “Ha, ha. Are you satisfied now? Then take that off.” He waved at the apron.

“Take it off?” Akira got this blank look, and then suddenly, without removing the apron, he took off his shirt.

“That's not what I meant!”

“Oh, so then...” Akira reached under the apron to undo his belt and whipped it off, and when Goro shot him a dull look, Akira smacked him across the chest with the non-buckle end.

Goro immediately retaliated, of course—grabbing the belt, yanking it out of Akira's hands, and winding up to whip him back, and Akira was already scrambling off the couch, laughing, but he tripped over a textbook on the floor and landed on his knees on the rug. The belt just missed him, snapping down a centimeter from his ass, and Goro followed him down onto the rug, yanking at tie at the small of Akira's back to undo that damn apron.

“Hey, you're gonna tear it!” Akira protested, grabbing the apron from the front to resist, and Goro grabbed at the ties behind his neck, but they were all knotted, and he just wound up yanking Akira back toward him.

“Who cares,” Goro said, finally tugging the ugly thing off Akira's head to toss it away across the room.

“And give me back my belt,” Akira turned around to make a grab for it, but Goro just moved his hand away.

“Not if you're going to hit me with it.”

“Maybe you deserve it for being a jerk—” Akira grabbed at Goro's sleeve, trying to pull that hand toward him to get the belt, but Goro moved his hand in a circular motion to wrench out of his grasp and grab Akira's wrist instead, turning his hand palm-up in a joint lock.

“Ow ow ow, that was unnecessary, uncle, uncle,” Akira said, and Goro let him go—but that resignation was clearly a feint, as his next move was to go dirty and grab a fistful of Goro's hair, dragging his head down so he could make a grab for his belt.

It was a mistake to try to fight dirty with Goro, though. Without hesitation, Goro smacked him across the face hard with the belt, and when Akira yelped and let go, Goro jumped on him, wrestling him onto his stomach and twisting both arms behind his back, straddling him from behind.

“Ow ow okay, you win, you win! Uncle!” Akira squirmed against the rug.

“We've established that uncle means nothing, coming from you. I think I have to rub it in a little harder,” Goro said, pushing his arms up higher, and Akira gasped.

Goro was acutely aware that he had Akira pinned underneath him, shirtless and making noises. If he wanted, he could lean forward just a bit to bury his face in Akira's hair, to bite his shoulder, or to press his crotch against the small of Akira's back and show him he was getting hard from this. His hands were tight and sweaty around Akira's wrists, and he couldn't stop staring at Akira's shoulders rising and falling.

His hair smelled like drugstore shampoo. He was so close. What would it feel like to get his hands into that hair, press himself against Akira's bare back and lick a line down his neck and—

Staring down at his neck, Goro saw what was clearly a faded hickey-bite mark there, and scowled.

Why the hell was Akira being like this, when he had no intention to follow through? He was just fucking with Goro, wasn't he? This was all part of his weird humor. It was clear enough that Akira didn't want him.

Goro dropped Akira's wrists and the belt along with it, getting up to go back to the couch. “Put your clothes back on or I'm tossing them out the window.”

Sitting on the couch with his knees up to conceal his erection, head in his math textbook, out of the corner of his eye, he watched Akira get up, rotate his shoulders and wrists with a wince, and put his belt back on. Goro's eyes traveled from the line of dark hair where his pants hung low up his toned chest to—no, stop, _stop._ This was not helping to make his boner go away.

Watching the whole time as Akira put his shirt back on, Goro was not at all thinking about math.

“If you're not eating that curry, I will,” Akira said, and he sat down on the couch and picked up the plate Goro had abandoned, while Goro tried not to stare at his lips and the swallowing motion of his throat while he ate.

It wasn't until Akira repeated himself that Goro realized he'd said something. “Huh?”

“What would you want, besides curry?”

Goro blinked, looking over at Akira, who was still eating. “Why do you think I want you to cook me anything? I'm fine eating from the convenience store.”

“I like cooking for you,” replied with his mouth full, and Goro sank lower behind his textbook to cover his face, because he knew he was blushing something awful.

_Stop saying things like that._

“I don't want your food. You just come over to be a pest and waste my time when I have to study. Get lost,” Goro snapped.

“You don't have to be like that,” Akira said as he continued to eat, completely unfazed. “So what do you like? Chahan? Udon? Fried veggies with miso is usually what I have at home. I'm not great at deep-frying, but I could try making tempura with the udon...”

“I don't care. Do what you want.”

“You don't have any favorites or anything? No comfort foods?”

“...My mom used to take me to Mac for my birthdays. I like the shrimp burger.” Goro tried to keep his eyes on his textbook, but they sneaked around against his will to see Akira swallow his mouthful of food and break into a grin.

“You like shrimp, ok. I'll try ebi-chili, then.”

Akira didn't say anything else after that, just finished off the plate of curry, then took his plate off to the kitchen, where Goro heard the sound of running water and clinking plates, and not long after that, he left.

As soon as he was out the door, Goro beat off on the couch, imagining Akira sucking him off with curry-stained lips, the he went to the kitchen and served himself out a plate of rice and curry from the stove.

It was really good, and spicy in a way that hurt going down.


	11. Queen of Swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out of deadline hell and finally back with an update (though a short one). Next chapter is gonna be... *rubs hands together*
> 
> I always forget to say this, because I don't expect anyone to say anything anyway, but I like negative comments. Honestly, doesn't even have to be constructive. I might whine about it, but I still want to know if you had a negative reaction. I just want to know what people think instead of throwing my fics into the void and getting air.

Goro was surprised when Akira invited him to darts. Goro had mentioned playing from time to time, but it felt a little strange for the two of them to go out together. Not that he was averse to it.

Akira waved at him outside the darts and billiards place in Kichijoji when Goro approached. “Sumire should be here in a few minutes.”

A strained, faker smile than usual climbed up Goro's face. “Yoshizawa is coming?”

Akira saw his look, saw right through it, and was unfazed. “You really don't like her, do you? Look, she's the one who wanted this to happen. She invited the both of us. So try to be nice to her.”

Goro didn't even bother hiding his surprise. “She asked me to come? Why?” Goro couldn't think of a single decent reason why she might want him butting in on her date with Akira. If she felt bad, then she would just not ask Akira out. And she didn't seem like the type who would scheme against him, either, though maybe she was just exceptionally good at hiding it. Maybe she was better than he'd thought.

Akira shrugged. “She just said she wanted to get to know you.” Akira checked his watch, then looked over into Penguin Sniper. “I actually made a reservation because it's a busy time, so I'm going to head in and secure our spot. You wait here for her.” And then he disappeared up the stairs.

Left waiting there, Goro wondered just what the hell sort of ulterior motive this girl had as he waited, scanning the crowds for her approach.

After a few minutes, he caught sight of her down the street, together with an older man who Goro assumed was probably her father. They were walking at a gentle stroll, and the both of them wore broad smiles as they chatted. Yoshizawa practically looked like another person. She was standing up straighter, and she wasn't wearing the glasses she'd worn when they'd gone on that Aquarium date before. Neither of them seemed to notice Goro, engaged deeply in their conversation.

When they were close enough that they were just barely in earshot, Goro heard some snippets of conversation.

“...know you can...do better...tournament...sumi...”

Yoshizawa nodded in response and said something quietly, but her smile wavered.

Finally, the pair noticed him.

“Oh, are you Goro Akechi?” the man said as he approached. “It's always good to meet my daughter's friends.” And he reached out for a handshake, which Goro returned with a smile.

 _The kind of overprotective daddy who walks his daughter to go hang out with her friends, huh?_ Goro mentally gagged. _Don't worry, I'm not going to soil your precious, pure flower._ As if he was even interested.

“Likewise,” Goro replied smoothly. “You two must be close, huh?”

The man gave an awkward laugh. “Well, we're family.” Goro felt it fundamentally difficult to believe that there were actually people in the world who believed that meant anything, but well, there were idiots all over the place, apparently.

Then the man turned to his daughter to say, “I won't embarrass you any more in front of your friends. Call me when you're coming home, and let your mother know if you don't need dinner.”

Schooling his face into a pleasant expression, Goro watched him go. He noted that once the man was out of sight, the smile melted off Yoshizawa's face, and her eyes sunk down to the sidewalk.

“It's nice that you're close to your family,” Goro said, holding his smile.

“You don't have to lie.” Yoshizawa's eyes lifted off the ground to look straight at him. It was probably the first time she'd ever actually made eye contact with him, and Goro was taken off-guard. “You can be yourself with me.”

The smile dropped off Goro's face. “So Akira told you?” He clicked his tongue, irritated.

“...” She didn't reply right away, gaze sliding to the side. “I can just tell.”

Goro gave her an examining look, thinking back on how she'd been just now with her father. Maybe it just took one to know one. Now he wondered if Akira even knew. But well, it wasn't as if she knew the way Akira would grin when he ripped a knife through a shadow's gut, either. “How much has he told you?”

“...About what?” She seemed anxious as she answered, but she always seemed anxious, so it was hard to tell if she was hiding something. Maybe that was actually her ploy.

“About me. In general.”

“...He hasn't told me anything.”

“Really? I find that difficult to believe.” She was blatantly lying. He was going to wring out of her everything Akira might have said about him. At the very least, he knew what Akira had said to her at the aquarium. Who knew what other pieces of gossip Akira had blabbed about him, then.

Goro could just imagine it.

“ _I actually think he's in love with me, though he's never gonna admit it. I feel bad, to be honest. He's never really had anyone else in his life, so he latches onto the first person who shows him any attention.”_

“ _That's...so sad...”_

“ _Yeah, I mean, it's not like he can help it. But I'd never go for a guy, much less someone like him, obviously.”_

“ _Oh...I kind of feel sorry for him...”_

Goro forcibly unclenched his back teeth.

She shook her head, eyes still on the ground. “If you don't believe me, then ask him.” Then she took a step towards the darts place, clearly meaning for them to go in.

Without thinking, Goro reached out to grab her arm. “Tell me,” he said, squeezing slightly like a threat as he glared straight at her.

Yoshizawa's eyes flicked up at him for just a second before she turned away, wrenching out of his grasp. “If he trusts you, then he'll tell you.” Then she went up the stairs into the parlor.

Goro kind of felt like he'd been gently gut punched, and he wasn't sure why.

x x x

In the first round of darts, Goro played against Akira. Akira was decent enough at it, but kept blowing it when they played 701.

“You don't have consistent form,” Goro said, leaning his weight on one leg as he watched Akira throw. “You throw it differently, every time.”

Akira rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “How the hell did you get so good at this? I didn't know you played darts.”

Goro shrugged. “They had a dartboard for a while at the foster home. I played with it a lot, until they took it away.”

“Why did they take it away?” Yoshizawa piped up from the sidelines, and Goro was still surprised to hear her talk to him.

Goro put on his best smile for her. “Because I stabbed another boy with a dart. Honestly, I'm surprised they even had that dartboard there in the first place, considering what good weapons they make.”

Yoshizawa blanched, and Akira's eyebrow quirked up slightly.

“Is that actually true?” Akira asked. Maybe Akira was onto him—Goro just wanted to make Yoshizawa squirm.

“What makes you doubt it?” Goro replied. Then seeing Akira's look, he rolled his eyes. “Okay, it's not like I hurt him very badly. He just bled a little, didn't even need stitches. And then they moved me to a foster family to separate us, the end.” Goro didn't mention that the reason he'd done it was said boy had been using him as his personal blowjob dispenser for months. It wasn't like anyone would believe him, not when that boy had an absolutely spotless record of conduct and was outgoing and popular, while Goro had just been the quiet little crybaby with no friends. Goro would give that asshole credit for teaching him one important lesson, though: playing the good boy will get you everywhere. You'll get whatever you want, if everyone likes you.

Goro's gaze shifted over to Yoshizawa. She looked uncomfortable, as expected. This was why he didn't like talking about this shit—people would act like the littlest things were such a big deal, and they'd get all pitying about it. But if he wasn't going to put on an act around her, then why bother to hide it? “I'm sorry, does this kind of talk bother you?” he said, not even trying to hide his sarcasm.

“N-no...” she lied, badly.

“I'm sure it must be difficult for you to understand,” Goro said, voice dripping acid, and then it was his turn to throw again.

“I mean, I had a pretty normal childhood too,” Akira said as Goro thunked another dart into the bullseye. “You can't blame someone for not understanding.”

Goro paused, picking up his second dart. “Yes, I suppose I can't.” He threw his second dart with rather more force than necessary, and it thunked straight into the bullseye, as always. He never failed—he would never allow himself to fail due to stupid emotional bullshit.

“Ah, though,” Goro watched out the corner of his eye as Akira scratched his cheek with a finger, saying, “I guess my parents weren't around much. My mom spent a lot of time in the hospital, and my dad was always working. So I learned to take care of myself. I guess I always just considered it normal, but I'm not really close with my parents like some people.”

“Hmm.” Goro didn't really care about his family situation. Akira never mentioned his parents, and Goro figured that was because he didn't care, either.

Well, that wasn't quite true that Goro didn't care. He envied the fact that Akira wasn't at all hung up on his family, or old friends from his hometown. He seemed to have no trouble connecting with new people here—Goro had seen the long list of local numbers in his phone, and only some of them were hookups. Even at school, where half the kids actively avoided him, he had people he hung out with and chatted with. He was never alone at lunches. People were just drawn to him, and Akira handled them effortlessly.

Yoshizawa's eyes were downcast as she spoke, but her voice didn't sound quite as fragile as it had before. “I don't think you have to have the same experiences to try to understand someone.”

“Perhaps not exactly the same,” Goro said, eyes on the dartboard, “But if you don't have some point of commonality, something that draws you together, you're wasting your time. You can explain in all the words you want, but if you're fundamentally different people, there will always be a divide.”

“That's not true,” Yoshizawa said, and Goro lowered his dart, looking over at her. “It's just about time...and effort. If you really want to understand someone, you can do it.”

Goro snorted. “Nobody does that, though. People are ultimately selfish. They want to associate with people they see as like themselves, or people they think they can get something out of.” He turned back to the dart board, about to throw, but Yoshizawa interrupted him again.

“I know we're nothing alike, but...I-I want to try understanding you!” she said, and the way she clasped her hands in front of her was just so earnest, Goro was surprised into laughing.

“Aha-ha-ha-ha...” he just about dropped the dart. “You're kind of weird, aren't you?” He hesitated a moment, then figured he might as well, and asked, “Why did you invite me here, anyway? You just want to _understand_ me?” He was just genuinely baffled, at this point.

“Do you have a problem with that?” she said, weirdly defiant, and that just made Goro laugh again.

“I just can't figure you out,” he said honestly, then threw his last dart into the bullseye.

Akira went for the his turn. He failed to hit 701 again.

“Well, that was a sad performance,” Goro said after.

“I'll get it next time,” Akira replied with that same old cocky look in his eye. “I can't let you keep beating me.” And then he spun one of the darts around in his fingers like a show-off.

Goro scoffed at him. “If you're so good with your hands, why can't you throw a dart?”

“My skillset lies in other areas,” Akira said with a grin, and he stopped spinning the dart around his fingers, instead holding it in his palm as he stroked his thumb up the side.

“Useless areas,” Goro turned away to hide his blush, folding his arms.

“I know you don't think so,” Akira teased.

Goro cleared his throat. “Since I won, I play Yoshizawa next.”

Yoshizawa stepped up to throw, and wow, she was bad at darts.

“Don't hold it like that, agh,” Goro snapped as she just flat-out missed the board and the dart hit the wall, then fell on the floor. “What are you doing?”

Yoshizawa winced. “Let me try again.” Her second throw was just as bad.

“At least plant your feet first,” Goro sighed, pointing to the marks on the floor, and that marginally helped, as at least her next throw hit the board.

Of course, Akira swept in to save her. “Here,” he said, stepping in show her how it was done.

And of course he went all-in with his little darts tutorial like the dutiful boyfriend, standing behind her and taking her hand to position everything right, and she was blushing and stuttering the whole time like the virgin she doubtless was.

Goro glared at them both with unconcealed irritation—they clearly both knew what they were doing here, and if they were going to rub their ushy-gushy bullshit in his face, then Goro was going to dig at them for it. “Do you need me to leave you two alone?” he said with the deepest sneer.

“N-no!” Yoshizawa suddenly shoved Akira away with surprising force, and he wound up right on his ass.

Goro laughed. “Aha, you're pretty strong.”

“I do work out a lot...” she fidgeted. “My gym is here in Kichijoji, if you ever wanted to come by.”

“I'll consider it,” Goro said, completely insincerely.

Akira got to his feet, rubbing his ass. “Ow.”

“S-sorry...” she blushed.

“I wouldn't mind visiting your gym,” Akira said. “Where is it?”

“Oh, it's just the one not far from here, across from that specialty leather store. It's not a big place, but the instructors are really good, you know? It's all serious gymnasts there. We used to be there every single day, then on breaks, we would wander Kichijoji together, so I know this area like the back of my hand. ...I used to feel like I belonged here,” she said, voice getting quieter until she was almost trailing off. “Now it's like I could vanish into thin air and nothing would change about this place.”

By _we,_ Goro assumed she meant her sister. He couldn't say he really gave a damn, but he wasn't so crass that he was going to snipe at her when her sister had died recently. But neither was he capable of faking words of comfort that would sound plausible to any of them. So a silence fell over the three of them, until Akira broke it.

“I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky,” he muttered.

“Hmm?” Yoshizawa looked up.

But Akira just shook his head. “Sorry. You just reminded me of something.” He scratched his head, then went to fiddle with a strand of hair. “I sometimes feel that way, too, like I've lost my place to belong.”

Yoshizawa looked down again, expression dark. “I don't think it's the same.”

Akira kept fiddling with his hair, and it seemed like he was looking off somewhere else. “Maybe.”

There another long pause as Yoshizawa looked as if she wanted to say something, but then swallowed it.

They finished their round of darts, and then Yoshizawa and Akira played a game—she played better when she was with him, instead of Goro. Maybe it was his tutoring, or maybe it was an effect he had on people. Something gave Goro the feeling that it was the latter.

After they'd all played a few rounds, Yoshizawa asked them, “Do you want to get something to eat, now? I'm hungry.”

“No,” Goro answered flatly, but Akira immediately overrode him.

“He'd love to. And me, too.”

“Excuse me?” Goro gave him the most disgusted look, but Akira completely ignored him, and somehow, he got dragged into having dinner with Akira and Yoshizawa.

Goro didn't get it. Why were the both of them suddenly all gung-ho about hanging out with him? He and Akira had rarely spent time together outside—they'd stopped by the odd family restaurant to get some food after coming out of the other world a handful of times, but they didn't go _out_ together. There wasn't any reason to. The only reason for their association was because Goro had manipulated him into it.

And then all through dinner, it was like the both of them kept trying to center the conversation on him, asking him questions about himself, turning everything back toward him. It was frankly creepy. They couldn't be actually interested to know the petty details of his life—the more time passed, the more Goro became certain that something was up, here. Something was going on that he was completely in the dark about, and he didn't have the slightest clue as to how he would figure out what was going on.

At the end of the evening, when they were standing outside the restaurant, about to part ways, Yoshizawa said to him, “I...hope we can become friends.”

Goro found himself staring. “Why would I want to be friends with you?” And he wasn't just being snide, for once—he honestly didn't get it.

She wasn't put off by his response, though. “I suppose I need something to offer...well, how about I help you work out? I can teach you some gymnastics.”

Goro opened his mouth to shoot her down, but then realized that sort of thing might actually be quite useful to him. He'd never even considered the idea approaching people to gain skills that would benefit him in the Metaverse—he'd always just sort of stumbled through on his own on nothing but the pure conviction that he would figure things out. And he had. He had what it took, without any kind of help.

Goro wanted to say no, but he also had enough rationality to know that his urge to reject this offer was purely emotional. It would benefit him to say yes.

No, wait—there had to be a catch, here. Why was she even making this offer?

“What's your agenda, here?” Goro asked, leaning forward slightly to intimidate her, keeping his voice low so that Akira wouldn't hear. He was standing a bit of a ways away, occupying himself with his phone while Goro and Yoshizawa talked. “Do you want to keep tabs on me to make sure I keep my hands off Akira, is that it?”

“N-no!” Yoshizawa waved her hands. “I-I'm not...”

“Don't be coy with me. I know you like him. Is that your angle?”

She shook her head hard. “There is no _angle_.” She was looking away from him, her hands clenched in front of her, her entire posture communicating anxiety.

“You're lying,” Goro spat. “I know. Maybe you can fool Akira with that sweet and innocent act, but I'm not that naive. I know there's something you're not telling me, or him.”

“Well, isn't there something _you're_ not telling?” she shot back at a whispered hiss, stepping forward in a way that forced Goro to back up. “And you're going to get on my case for hiding things? I think my motives are a lot more pure than _yours,_ at least.”

Goro froze in shock for a moment. She was legitimately angry at him, eyes narrowed and glaring right at him. He broke eye contact first.

“What do you know about me?” he muttered.

“I know you're bad for him. And I want you to get out of his life forever.” The words were angry, but her momentary force seemed to have evaporated, and she was just looking miserably at the ground.

“So it _is_ just a jealousy thing, huh?” Goro said with a smirk. “Sorry, he's mine.” And as soon as that was out of his mouth, he thought he was crazy for saying it—it was one of those impulse, insane lies that always came around to bite you in the ass later, but he couldn't help it.

“It's not about _jealousy._ ” She bit her lip. “He's in love with you, and I'm not going to get in the way. I know he just likes to flirt, and the way he acts with me doesn't mean anything.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I'm just worried about him. He's the only person who...” she trailed off, then shook her head. "He's the only person I can be myself with."

Goro didn't even hear half of what she just said. His brain was stuck frozen on _he's in love with you._ What. _What?_ Where the hell was she getting _that_ idea? Was she just like—that disconnected from reality, or what? Was she one of those weird girls who hung out at the back of Melon Books, huffing over books with pretty boys plastered on the cover, and she just saw it everywhere, or what?

Without even thinking, Goro's mouth just dropped open, and he made an extremely dumb-sounding “ _Huh?_ ” noise.

“So you're going to be friends with me,” she said, looking up at him again, “And in return, I'm going to train you. Okay?”

“O-okay...” Goro was too stunned to say anything else.

“Okay,” she replied with a nod, and then she spun around to go over to Akira, and Goro was left standing there, feeling incredibly wobbly.


	12. The Palace of Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scroll to the bottom of this chapter if you want the spoiler content warning for this chapter. It's fairly nasty, I figured I should warn extra for it.

Only a couple days after that absolutely unsettling evening of darts, Goro was walking through Kichijoji—there was a target he was investigating who frequented the area—when he suddenly realized something had changed about the air around him. He stopped and looked around, and felt a gust of wind sweep over him.

He shivered. There was something just slightly _off_ about that wind, and it seemed weirdly familiar, too. He could have sworn he'd felt a similar wind before, in the underground train station, or the distortions of targets.

And the sound of the wind, it was almost like...words? He could have sworn he hadn't heard anything like this before.

“What was that?” he muttered at no one in particular.

When he looked up at the sky, the wind passed over him again. He couldn't make it out, not really. But part of him could have sworn it was saying, _help._

...This was probably lack of sleep. Sometimes, after pulling an all-nighter, you'd start to sort of hear things like that.

“Oh, there you are. I've been looking for you.”

Goro practically jumped, spinning around to see Akira—or wait, no, his eyes were yellow. Goro pulled out his phone and checked the nav, and as suspected, he was in that weird distortion again that was labeled _nobody._

“Looking for me? Why?” Goro asked. If he was here, might as well probe around a bit. He'd blown off Akira before when they'd come here together, but the truth was that he was rather curious, too. It just wasn't a priority, and he was busy with other things.

“Do I need a reason to look for you?” Cognitive Akira grinned flirtatiously, sticking his hands in his pants pockets. “I'm surprised to see you talking to the wind, though.”

“Talking to the wind?” Goro repeated cautiously.

“Yeah, I mean,” the cognition cocked his head, “every time I talk to the wind, you're like, _stop that, you don't need to talk to anyone but me._ ” The cognition straightened from Akira's typical slouch to do a pitch-perfect imitation of Goro, lip curl and all.

 _...I am not_ that _jealous,_ Goro thought, somewhat indignantly. “What do you talk about with the wind, anyway?”

Cognitive Akira shrugged. “Normal stuff. Don't worry, I don't blab to the wind about you.”

 _Why would he talk about me to the wind?_ Goro leaned on one leg and absently stroked his chin. Clearly, the “wind” here was representative of something, or perhaps someone, and not literally the wind. The cognition appeared to be pretty forthcoming—fair enough, if there was the perception that he and Akira were friends, and whatever was in control of this space wasn't hostile to Goro—so might as well keep digging. “What is the wind, exactly?”

Cognitive Akira gave him a weird look, like he was asking something obvious. “The wind is the wind. _I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky_.”

“...Dazai?” Goro said after a minute, finally placing that quote. “What does that have to do with this?”

“I mean,” Cognitive Akira scratched his cheek, eyes moving up and to the side like he was thinking, “It's not like I really understand, myself. I can't hear everything the wind says.”

“Have you ever heard something like... _help me?_ ”

“...Yeah, I've heard something like that. I'd like to do something, but what can you do to help the wind? All I can do is talk and keep it company.” Then he walked up, and before Goro even had the time to be surprised, slung his arms over Goro's shoulders, right there in the middle of the street, and leaned close. “And I'd rather keep you company.”

Goro immediately stiffened up, but when he realized the cognition wasn't being at all aggressive, he forced himself to relax. Though with the cognition's nose a centimeter away from his own, it was hard to relax for other reasons.

“No new mission for us?” the cognition said at a murmur, and he leaned in to Goro's ear, nibbling at the lobe. “Let's just go to the other world for fun, then. Seeing you fight gets me so hard.” Now the cognition was sliding his hands into Goro's blazer, yanking Goro's dress shirt out from his pants to touch his bare skin. The shadow people were all just walking past as if nothing was happening.

Goro's heart stuttered in his chest, his entire consciousness focused on the hot line the cognition was tonguing up his neck, but his rational brain quickly brought that to a screeching halt, and he shoved the cognition off.

“What?” It was an absolute feat that Goro wasn't stammering, though he was sure he was bright red. “What do you know about the other world?”

If this cognition was aware of their activities, that meant someone else, or something else, was. And that meant that finding out just what the hell this distortion was had suddenly become a lot more urgent.

That had clearly been a dumb question to ask, though—Goro's brain was really only been operating on twenty percent capacity at that moment—as the cognition gave him a confused look.

“Uhh, everything you told me about it? Are you okay? You're acting really weird.”

Goro took a deep breath and attempted to put the pieces here together, but his mind was spending way too much processing power thinking about cognitive Akira's tongue. “How—how am I acting weird?” Just keep talking. Keep asking questions, think about it later.

“I mean, usually you're more like, _I don't have the time to chit-chat, let's just get to the target_ , or _Jung described the revelation of the self as the god within_ , or _I'm the one who gets to decide when you cum_.” The cognition rapidly flipped through an impression of an exasperated-looking Goro, an arrogantly lecturing Goro, and a sadistically-leering Goro. The first two impressions aside—maybe Goro would say something like that—the third one was a little, uh.

“ _What?!_ ” Goro spouted without thinking, then cleared his throat, looking off to the side. “When...when did I say that last thing?”

“Don't tell me you forgot,” the cognition approached him again with a grin, sliding his hands around Goro's waist and pulling them close together. “We always go back to your place, after a mission.”

Lately, that had been true. Akira kept dogging him home after they came out of the other world, making him food and pestering him while he was trying to study. ...That ebi-chili had been good, Goro would give him that. Goro didn't really get why Akira was like this, but at this point, he would at least admit to himself he liked having Akira around. But he didn't get what was going on in Akira's head, and that was so fucking frustrating.

He just—didn't want to get used to this. He couldn't afford to get used to this. The longer this went on, the more Goro felt himself expecting to have Akira's cooking on his stove and Akira's dumb apron hung over the coat rack. He loved going to the other world, pretending they really were heroic partners in justice, getting their blood up in a fight, and coming back to eat dinner and play chess with Akira.

The problem was that it was all a lie.

With the cognitive Akira pulling him close and drawing him into a kiss, Goro started to wonder if this cognition was some kind of projection of his own fantasy. Maybe this “nobody” space just reflected whoever walked into it, showed them what they wanted to see. That would certainly explain how this cognition knew everything.

When the cognition pulled back, Goro opened the eyes he didn't recall having closed and watched the cognition lick his lips as if he were tasting Goro on them.

“Are you just—” Goro lost what he was going to say. _Are you just some kind of projection of my desires_ wasn't a question he expected to get answered by this cognition. There had to be some way, some line of questioning that would reveal things. “What's the most important thing in life, to you?”

What a dumb thing to ask. He wasn't even sure how the real Akira would answer that. Had no clue, actually.

The cognition leaned his forehead against Goro's, hands still on his hips. “You know it's you,” he murmured, breath hot on Goro's face. “I'd fight for you,” he kissed one side of Goro's mouth, “kill for you,” he kissed the other side, “...and I'd die for you.” And then he kissed right in the middle, prying open Goro's lips with his tongue, and Goro let it happen, their tongues mingling in the chill autumn air.

 _How could this be anything but my fantasy?_ he thought, bitterly.

A weak breeze swept over them, but Goro wasn't listening anymore.

x x x

There was a rational section of his brain that was telling him this was a bad idea on every level, but Goro told that section to shut the fuck up.

Goro threw Cognitive Akira down on the bed of the love hotel, going for his belt, while the cognition quickly shrugged out of his jacket and pulled off his turtleneck in one yank, tossing it across the room.

Various questions, mostly trivial and absurd, rose in his mind, only to be dismissed in irritation.

If you fucked in someone else's subconscious, would that make them subconsciously horny? Would they dream about your ass or something?

What happened to the real money that Goro had paid to get in here? Did it get circulated in the shadow economy? Would it turn up in the underground train station, dropped by some random shadow monster upon its defeat?

Could you get STDs from fucking a cognition, and would they stick around if you left the distortion, or vanish?

What if this was all some weird, elaborate trap within a distortion, and the cognition transformed into a giant ogre or something mid-coitus?

...Well, then Goro would just have to make sure he was the only one sticking things in orifices. He didn't even want to consider what would happen if the cognition had his dick in him and then turned into a weird shadow monster. Oh god, now he was considering it. Maybe that was kind of weirdly hot, but—

Cognitive Akira kicked off his pants and underwear together, now completely naked, and Goro crawled over him, capturing his mouth in another long kiss, one hand running down Akira's chest to grab his cock. The cognition jumped at the touch.

“Have you done this before?” Goro asked, still with half a mind to understand what the hell was going on here. “Taken someone to a love hotel, I mean.”

“You know I wasn't a virgin,” Akira said as he reached up to Goro's belt and began unbuckling it. “But I haven't touched anyone else since we got together, I swear.”

Now that was patently untrue—not just the fact that they were together, but also that Akira wasn't fucking anyone else. But it was a detail Goro could write up as part of his fantasy.

“What about you? Did you have anyone else before me?” the cognition asked him.

Goro dropped the cognition's dick, hands falling to land by either side of his head. “I've never told you?”

“You never tell me anything,” the cognition replied, drawing Goro's hard cock out of his pants and rubbing him gently. “For all I know, you were a virgin. Is that it, you're just shy about admitting it?” he said with a smirk.

Goro wasn't baited, however. He just frowned. Once, over dinner, when Akira had teased him about it, Goro had mentioned in passing that he was not a virgin, though he hadn't gone into detail. That whole mess with the boy he'd stabbed aside, he'd had other experience, too. He'd never _dated_ anyone, it had just been this weird thing in middle school, where this one boy would come into his bunk after lights out, and they did various things quietly under the covers, and then that boy would slink back to bed after, and they never talked about it. It hadn't been a _bad_ experience, it was just weird to talk about, so he didn't.

There hadn't been anything since then. Ultimately, Goro cared more about his reputation than getting laid, and he wasn't going to risk exposure by fooling around—even if he wanted it.

But well, that was what this was about, wasn't it? A world with no consequences. A cognition wouldn't kiss and tell.

“What do you know about me?” Goro probed.

“I know you like it when I do this,” Akira said, and then he rolled them over and lowered himself on Goro's cock, plunging it in all the way.

Goro jolted in surprise—his first reaction being, _fuck, without even spit?!_ But when Cognitive Akira started moving, his insides felt hot and slick, as if he'd prepared himself beforehand, and Goro cycled back to believing that this had to just be some projected sexual fantasy of his own.

The cognition leaned forward, placing his hands on Goro's chest to pump his ass up and down over Goro's cock, his complete nudity making him look particularly vulnerable when Goro was still fully clothed under him. “Is that good?” he murmured.

“Ah...” Goro was still trying to collect himself enough to reply. He just grabbed Akira's hips and thrust up into him, making him yelp.

“I want you to destroy me,” Akira breathed. Goro matched his rhythm, eyes locked on the place where his cock was sinking into Akira's ass.

“I want you to fuck me up,” the cognition begged. “Fuck, I need it, just fuck me up.”

That was the moment Goro just stopped thinking.

He surged up to flip them over, holding the cognition down by the neck as he slammed into him viciously. Akira immediately spasmed around him and shot white cum over his stomach, giving a choked moan under Goro's hand.

“Don't stop,” the cognition managed to force out under his grip. “I need it, I need you.”

Goro fucked him hard, watching the cognition's cock slowly harden again as Goro pounded into him. Goro wasn't going to last long, like this—when he finished in the cognition's ass, Akira came with him, moaning and arching up into him.

“Fuck,” Goro pulled out of him to flop back on the bed on his back. His head felt fuzzy.

But the cognition wasn't done. He rolled over to face Goro, curling up at his side, and turned Goro's head toward him another kiss. “Mmm...Goro...” he moaned into Goro's mouth, then took his hand, bringing it down to his own ass to feel the cum dribbling out. Goro sank his fingers into the hole, bringing more cum to ooze out of him.

 _Fuck. This is..._ Goro brought the cognition closer, felt him moan in his ear. He felt warm. He felt real.

The night did not end there.

They went to the shower to get cleaned up, but that quickly turned into fucking Akira against the wall of the shower. Cognitive Akira's hole always stayed moist and supple, no matter how much you fucked it, but Goro was beyond thinking about the mechanics of this.

After fucking once on the bed and once in the shower, Goro was telling himself he was going to go, he couldn't be there all night, but the cognition begged and wheedled and Goro wound up fucking him a third time against the side of the bed. The cognition came the moment Goro's dick was inside him, shaking and moaning in exaggerated pleasure. As intoxicating as it was, there was a little voice in the back of Goro's mind saying, _there's no way you're for real_ that _great a lay._

“You love my cock that much, you slut?” Goro said anyway, feeling the cognition's ass clench around him again.

“Yes, I love it, don't stop, please,” the cognition moaned, hands on the bed and ass in the air as Goro fucked him from behind, and this time, there was just a little something about the way he said it that irked Goro. Goro couldn't put his finger on it, but—he could tell. That it wasn't real.

“You like being used like this?” Goro hissed as his hips slapped loudly against the cognition's ass. “Just being used as my cum dump?”

“I love it,” cognitive Akira arched his back. “Do what you want with me.”

This was even more irritating. It was just meaningless dirty talk, sure, and maybe Akira would even say something like this in the heat of the moment—but it was wrong. Goro didn't like it.

Goro pulled out, then grabbed the cognition by the hair and dragged him up onto the bed. The cognition cried out, but didn't struggle at all. “You like this?” Goro demanded, pinning him on his back and spreading his legs.

“Yes,” Akira gasped. “Do whatever you want to me, I don't care.”

Goro wasn't even sure what he was angry at, but something hot was bubbling up in his chest. He thrust into the cognition, then wound up to smack him across the face. “You'll just let me do this?”

The slap knocked Akira's face to the side, but when he looked back up at Goro again, there was an intoxicated grin there. “Yeah. I love it.”

Goro slapped him again, harder this time, and Akira cried out loud, cumming on his cock. Goro hit him again, this time with a closed fist, and Akira's nose came back bloody, but he was still smiling.

“What's _wrong_ with you?” Goro snapped. His right hand was squeezing way too hard on Akira's hip, but the cognition didn't even seem to notice.

“It's okay, I'll love you no matter what you do to me,” Akira said, eyes glassy as blood ran down his nose and into his mouth. “I'll forgive you for everything.”

Goro grabbed the cognition by the chin and pulled his head up to look straight into his eyes. “Why? _Why?!_ ”

“Because I love you,” the cognition said, as if it were obvious. “No matter what evil you do, I'll love you, no matter what. I know you just do these things because you're hurting, but I can heal you—if you just let me love you. And I'll always love you.”

Goro punched the cognition in the face again, felt the impact under his knuckles, and it wasn't enough. It just made him more enraged. He was losing it. There was a cold, separate self above him telling him he was losing it again, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was probably where Loki came from, the reason he could drive shadows mad—because he was already there himself, he just managed to keep it cold most of the time, keep himself separate, and pull it up deliberately when he needed the power.

Fuck this cognition. Fuck this _thing_ for getting under his skin, making him lose control. Goro wrapped his hands around its neck, jerking it once, slamming the thing's head back against the pillow. Its mouth opened and closed uselessly, its expression still one of ecstasy. Goro squeezed tight as he fucked into its ass, watching it flail under him. He wanted to make its ass bleed, but that was probably impossible.

This fucking fake. This fucking _fake._ Who the hell would think this was anything like Akira? Who the _hell_ would think this was what Goro wanted? He never, never _never_ wanted anything like this.

Who the hell thought Akira was in a position where he could judge Goro for _anything?_ To tell _him_ what he was doing was wrong? Akira was smarter than that, he wasn't that fucking stupid, he at least had some perspective on these things.

Goro liked the Akira who would stab a shadow with grin on his face, the Akira who had gotten revenge for his girlfriend's murder, the Akira who had a hundred masks inside him and knew how to use them to ingratiate himself, the Akira who admitted _maybe that one deserved it,_ the Akira who would hit back harder when Goro hit him first.

Goro thought that one day, if everything totally went sideways and he fucked it all up, Akira might be the one putting a gun to his head. And the thought _excited_ him.

“You'll _forgive_ me, no matter what?!” Goro snarled at the cognition—not like it was capable of answering. “If I wanted unconditional love, I'd get a dog!”

The cognition just clawed at his neck, but he was still getting off on this, stickying the skin between them with even more cum as Goro strangled him.

All the spasming around Goro's cock made him cum too, and it hurt a little this time, his cock raw from fucking the cognition so many times.

“Fuck you, fuck you,” Goro gasped, his hands still clenching tight around the cognition's neck. It wasn't scrabbling at his grip anymore.

He didn't want any of this shit. How could someone who had nothing but love and forgiveness, right to the bottom, ever understand him? He wanted Akira to feel what Goro felt—and that wasn't love, or at least, not what normal people thought of as love.

The love Goro knew always came with a bite, a bitter aftertaste. Sometimes it was half-poisoned, and usually it made him feel like shit. Maybe that was just him, and maybe he was just fucked up, and he was seeking the wrong thing—but he didn't want anything else.

It wasn't absolution he was seeking in Akira's arms. He wanted—

“I thought you were someone like me.” He didn't realize he was crying until the sob came out. His hands dropped from the cognition's neck. It was still, its eyes open and vacant. It wasn't breathing.

The body didn't vanish, though.

Goro stared at it, frozen, for a good long minute, thinking— _why isn't it vanishing—it couldn't be—this is the real one—_ but then suddenly, it collapsed into black sludge beneath him, oozing into the bedsheets, splattering him all over with black.

Goro pulled himself over to the side of the bed, but he couldn't get up. He was shaking too hard. He leaned his arms on his knees and tried to breathe, but the air was just heaving in and out of him wildly. He brought a hand to his face, smeared the black ooze over his skin.

“What...” he gasped, then leaned his head on his hands, trying to steady himself. He felt dizzy. “What am I doing?”

In his mind, he just kept thinking of Akira's dead body, but this time, he had a raw bullet hole between his eyes, the back of his head completely blown out. And Goro had done it. He'd shot him in the head, and he'd do it again. And again. And again. All just to show him who came out on top.

Because Goro was better than him. Goro would _win,_ no matter what it cost, even if it felt like clawing out the inside of his own head to do it.

Goro made an involuntary choked sound, and hearing it just scared him more. That didn't belong in his throat.

He was losing his mind, that was all there was to it. That was what this distortion, the cognitive Akira, what it all was—just a manifestation of him completely fucking losing it.

“It doesn't mean anything,” Goro said, looking down at the smeared black ooze on his gloves. “It doesn't mean anything. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.” He sounded hysterical, even to his own ears.

He tried to breathe, but it wasn't working. He grabbed his chest, meaning to loosen his tie, but his hands wouldn't move right, and he wound up just clinging to his shirt.

“Akira...help me...” he moaned, small and pathetic, but there was no one to hear.

x x x

After a disgusting amount of false starts, Goro finally managed to get up, going to the bathroom to clean the cum off his clothing. There was nothing he could do about the black ooze, but that didn't matter. It would vanish as soon as he came out into the real world.

Stepping out of the love hotel with his briefcase in hand, Goro walked quickly. He just wanted out of here. His mind was elsewhere. He needed to go home, take a few sleeping pills, and just pass out.

He was so distracted, when he bumped into someone, he didn't even look up. “Sorry, I'm in a hurry—” he began.

But then a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders, and Goro looked up into yellow eyes. An eerily familiar pair of yellow eyes.

“Oh, it's me,” said the cognitive Goro.

 _Fuck._ Goro did not have the energy for this, right now.

“Were you killing shadows here?” the cognition said, eyeing the black spots on his clothes. “That's completely unnecessary, you know. Nobody's going to hurt you, here. It's safe.” He released Goro.

Goro sighed and ran his hands through his hair. Back to this puzzle. His head hurt. “How do you know it's safe?”

“Because this place belongs to nobody, of course,” the cognitive Goro said as if it were obvious. “There's nobody to instigate any hostility.”

“So then why do you exist?” Goro countered, debating whether he should just push past the cognition and go. He was so tired.

“You don't know, so why should I?”

A very good point.

With another sigh, Goro tried to think. What could he ask himself? ...Maybe it would be best to go for specific facts that only he would know, and see if there were any discrepancies. “What are the names of the last five people I've killed?”

“Why ask that when you already know?”

“I'm testing you, of course. But you already know that, don't you?” Goro shot back.

The cognition laughed. “Touche! All right...” He listed the names of four recent targets, all in order from the most recent. Three of them he'd done with Akira, and one, alone. Then he said, “...And Kasumi Yoshizawa.”

“...What?” Goro blinked.

“Remember, in that mine palace where we first met Akira?” said the cognition.

“I didn't kill Kasumi Yoshizawa,” Goro said slowly, closely examining the cognition's face. “Why do you think I did?”

The cognition's brow furrowed, its eyes going blank, and Goro got the sense that he was pushing the boundaries of what it knew. “I mean, I got Akira out fine, so why couldn't I get Kasumi out? I basically killed her.”

“How did you kill her?” Goro demanded.

“Does it matter? It's my fault.”

“ _How did you kill her?_ ”

“I killed her.”

It was like a broken record. The cognition didn't know, because wherever it came from didn't know. The source of the cognition knew that Goro had gone into the mine palace and that he'd come out, but not what he'd done inside that palace. The source also knew that Kasumi Yoshizawa had died there, and was fixated on the idea that he'd killed her because of it.

“Who did I kill before Yoshizawa?”

The cognition looked at him blankly. “Lots of people. What does it matter?”

There were a lot of pieces that didn't fit, things that didn't make sense, but his gut was telling him something, so Goro was going with it. He dropped his briefcase and grabbed the cognition by the shoulders. “Where is Sumire Yoshizawa?”

“What?” The cognition looked genuinely confused.

“What? Sumire Yoshizawa. Where is she?”

The cognition shook his head. “Stop talking nonsense. Sumire Yoshizawa doesn't exist. Everyone knows that.”

“She doesn't exist...” Goro muttered. He released the cognition's shoulders and looked up at the sky.

The wind was blowing harder than ever, and it sounded like sobbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sexual violence/Goro kills a cognition while he's fucking it. But it's weirdly consensual(?) because the cognition doesn't give a damn.


	13. How to Become a Nobody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...went back to add more Sumire-related foreshadowing, just a few lines here and there mentioning “she usually had her hair in a ponytail at school” “she always hung out with Kasumi's friends, but she didn't seem happy” and more facial reactions to stuff Akira says about Kasumi, and “hMm thIs MysTerious WinD is EverYwhEre”
> 
> I think I should have hammered a lot of this stuff harder. I feel like this is definitely going to read as ass-pulled. Ah well. That's the thing about foreshadowing, it's so much easier to insert after the fact than write ahead of time... Did any of y'all see this coming?? Does this seem ass-pulled?? Hmm.

She sat down at the breakfast table with a smile. “Morning, Mom.”

“Morning, dear,” her mother said, still facing the stove. “The eggs are just about done, but grab yourself some toast.”

She leaned forward to grab four slices from the plate on the table, sticking one in her mouth, and a moment later, her mother brought her a bowl of miso soup, shredded cabbage and tomato slices with mayo, and eggs sunny-side-up, which she immediately dug into.

“Morning,” her father said as he walked into the dining room to seat himself opposite her at the table. He often worked late and wasn't able to come to dinner, so instead, they always made sure to eat breakfast as a family.

“Morning,” she returned cheerily, mouth full of toast.

“Oh, here,” her father pulled the middle sheet out of the morning newspaper and handed it over to her while he looked at the headlines. “The funnies.”

“Thanks,” she said, picking it up and pretending to read it as she ate. It was too blurry, without her glasses.

“How's practice been going, dear?” her mother said as she set down her own smaller meal and joined the two of them.

The smile on her face faltered slightly. “It's...been a struggle.”

“Your instructor said you've been skipping sessions,” her mother said, concern in her voice. “What's going on?”

She'd been anticipating this question, so she had a ready answer. “A friend of mine at school...has been going through a really rough patch. I...feel like I have to be there for her, right now. Just for a while.”

“Oh, I see,” her mother said. “It's good to help your friends, but...don't lose sight of everything else too, all right? We'll see if we can schedule some make-up sessions at another time.”

She smiled.

Her parents made small talk, while she pretended to read the funnies, then the human interest page on the other side. Seeing it was about a pair of twins who rose to fame as singers, she jolted, and her mother noticed her reaction, turning around. “What is it, dear?”

“Oh...I just saw an interesting story,” she said, passing the newspaper over to her mother.

“Oh, these two!” her mother said, seeing the article. “I saw them on TV just last week, aren't they adorable? I wish I could have had twins, to be honest. Wouldn't it have been nice to have a sister?”

“Aha...yeah...”

“And we have so much extra room in this house, too. We could have someone else live here. You know, I've thought so many times about fostering or adopting, an older child, even. I'm too old for a baby, but I just want another child.”

“They say that's a struggle, though,” her father piped up. “Kids from institutions come with baggage.”

“I know. But wouldn't it be worth it, in the end? To give a child a family. A girl would be nice, maybe one about the same age as you. Oh, but I wouldn't mind a boy, either. ...You don't think I'm being silly, do you, dear?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I wouldn't mind a brother or a sister, if that's what you wanted.” _And now she was imagining a certain someone she didn't want to think about._

After she was done breakfast, her mother hustled her off to school and her father off to work. She kissed her on the forehead as she headed out the door, school bag on one shoulder and gym bag over the other.

“Have a wonderful day, Kasumi,” her mother said. “Love you.”

“Love you too, Mom,” she replied.

x x x

She didn't go to practice.

At home, at school, she could fool herself. She joked and chatted and ate lunch with Kasumi's friends like normal. There had been a whole stretch at the beginning when she'd immersed herself in the belief that she was Kasumi, when faking the smiles had been easy.

She couldn't fool herself on the beam, though. Or on the mat. Or on the rings. Or on the bar. You could fake a smile and make up the right things to say, but your body wouldn't lie.

She sat on the train one car down from Goro Akechi. He hadn't noticed her—he never did. She'd always been aware that she went unnoticed very easily. She was just one of those people nobody ever looked at. But these days, it had gotten worse, and she suspected that was due to the Metaverse leaking over somehow. She didn't understand it, but she would take advantage of it.

She knew where he was going. She'd memorized his entire schedule, by now. At first, she'd felt weird about this, but it was strange how you could just get used to something.

She got off at the same stop as him, following behind him at a safe distance. She couldn't be too far away, or when he went into the other world, she would get left behind, but she was familiar with that distance, now. When he stepped around a corner and pulled out his phone, she made sure to be within range as the air rippled around them.

There was the sensation of being _tugged,_ and he reappeared in his black mask ensemble, while she became—nothing.

This hadn't happened the first time she'd gone into the other world. The first time, when the three of them had been looking for Kasumi, she had felt something was off about Goro Akechi's story, so she'd followed him and Akira into the other world, where she had appeared as her normal self. She'd witnessed the two boys appear in new costumes, but she'd lost track of them when she'd been forced to run from one of the monsters they called shadows, and she'd spent the rest of the evening running and hiding, until at some point, the whole world had crumbled around her and she'd wound up alone somewhere in the middle of the street in Shibuya.

That had changed after Kasumi's body had showed up.

It was hard to remember this part—sometimes, she wondered if she had just been dreaming it all. But if it had all been a dream, then why would it hurt like this? Why would she feel every day that there was a hole where her sister had been, if her sister had never existed?

And why would she have these vague dreams of her sister dying, over and over, if it had never happened?

Soon after that first incident in the other wirld, there had been a phone call to her house, and her mother had cried, and her father had turned away. They mourned Kasumi's death for three days.

But then, four days after her death—there were no more tears. When she had asked her mom if she was okay, her mom had answered, “Of course I'm okay? What's wrong, Kasumi?”

And then it slowly spread out from there. At first, the other girls at school were so apologetic toward her about Kasumi's death. But then a few days later—they started calling her _Kasumi,_ too. And they were all still talking about _Kasumi Yoshizawa_ on the news _,_ but when they showed a photo of that girl who had died...it was someone else. When she asked her friends about it, they said, “Oh, someone else with the same name, huh? What a coincidence!”

At her gym, nobody knew that she'd ever had a sister, and they called _her_ Kasumi.

She'd looked into it. Everyone at school seemed to assume that some other stranger by the name of Kasumi Yoshizawa had also attended her school, but she wasn't on any of the roll calls or records. She didn't exist. She never had.

She'd gone to the police, looked for this other Kasumi Yoshizawa's family registration, her address, anything. But she didn't exist. She never had. Her existence had been eliminated, right from the root.

There wasn't even a grave. They said she had been cremated.

Less than a year ago, she had made a wish at the shrine.

Kasumi had surely wished for good health or whatever, but she hadn't. She'd had a bad day. She'd overheard some of Kasumi's friends talking about her, saying it was a drag having to always have her around, and Kasumi was just being nice by bringing her along. She'd had a bad day at the gym, and had fallen off the bar and sprained her ankle. And Kasumi had been getting closer with that boy—Akira. Wasn't it enough that Kasumi was better at her than everything, that she was their parent's favorite, and that she was the one their friends actually liked? Did Kasumi have to start dating _her_ crush, too? Kasumi had everything, and she had nothing. Couldn't Kasumi have just left that _one_ thing to her?

So she had made a wish—spitefully, silently, not for a second believing it would mean anything—that she could have Kasumi's life.

And it had been granted.

This was clearly some awful monkey's paw story where you have to “be careful what you wish for.” So she had to pay the price—she had to follow through with everything, she had to be Kasumi—or so she'd thought at first.

And she'd tried to do that. But what was inside her head just didn't mesh with what was in the world around her. The world tried to make her Kasumi, and yet, she couldn't be Kasumi. She wasn't Kasumi, because she felt Kasumi's absence more than anything else. The real Kasumi had been erased, what was left was just playacting, like a game of theater sports where everyone mimed around objects that weren't there. And she certainly wasn't Sumire—what was a name, but something other people called you? And nobody called her that.

So then who was she? Nobody. Nobody at all.

But just one thing about this didn't fit with the rest: Akira.

 _He_ called her Sumire. Nobody else did, now, but Akira called her Sumire as if it was nothing. And then there was what she had seen when she'd followed him and Goro Akechi into the other world—their strange powers.

Initially, she'd thought she should tell Akira about everything, and try to see if he could help her. If he called her Sumire, then she wasn't crazy—then maybe she really was somebody, instead of this shell who everyone called Kasumi but couldn't quite fake it well enough.

She'd thought maybe, he could help her figure out what was going on. Akira was bold enough and sharp enough that he, of all people, could do the things she couldn't. He could help her. He could be her prince on a white horse.

But the catch was Goro Akechi.

She didn't trust him one bit.

Right from the moment they had met, she'd sensed there was something off about him. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she'd sensed he was fake. She thought maybe if it had been before she'd begun pretending to be Kasumi, she wouldn't have been able to tell. But now that she knew what it was like to be a fake, she could spot someone else doing the same thing. And Goro Akechi was a liar.

The first time she'd followed Goro Akechi, she hadn't really been planning to do it. She'd started out thinking that she was going to approach him to talk, but then she spent a whole lot of time waffling and being indecisive, and then before she knew it she was ten minutes into basically stalking him, and it became impossible to approach him. And then he'd gone into the other world, and she'd been dragged in as well, and when he had re-appeared in a black costume, she had appeared as...nothing.

It had been immediately apparent. She'd looked down at herself and seen nothing there. And she had no way of getting out of this place on her own, either. Scared, she'd called out to Goro Akechi, thinking at least he could get her out somehow, but he hadn't even reacted. So left with no other choice, she'd followed him, figuring that when he left, she would leave along with him.

That day, she had witnessed Goro Akechi travel through one of the spaces he called a “cognitive distortion” and use his ability to drive the master of that distortion mad. And then after he'd left the distortion and returned to the real world, he'd made a phone call to someone whose name she never heard. “It's done,” he'd reported. “Just as you ordered.”

Ever since then, her life had been devoted to following Akira and Goro Akechi.

It had been easy. On the other side, she was nothing. She could pass through walls, shadows didn't notice her. She just passively watched everything that went on. And in this world, she often seemed to strangely fade into the background.

Initially, she'd had a concrete plan. It seemed Akira didn't want to tell her about what was going on, and that when she tried to insinuate that Goro Akechi wasn't trustworthy, he'd blown her off. So then, she figured if she just had enough information on Goro Akechi, she could win Akira over and draw him away from this boy who was clearly engaged in something extremely dubious and suspicious. Akira was her only hope, the one who proved that she wasn't crazy—she needed him to be on her side.

But then, the more she'd followed Goro Akechi, the more she'd discovered that he was so much worse than she had thought, and that Akira was in far deeper than she had realized.

Even if she told Akira what she knew now, would that win him over? She had functionally been spying on them for months. And if Goro Akechi found out how much she knew, he would kill her to keep his secrets. Seeing everything he'd done on the other side, she understood quite clearly just what sort of person he was.

And it had taken her a long time to admit this to herself, but at this point, following them was just an escape from her own life. She hated going home, she didn't want to be at school, being at the gym was torture. At least in the other world, she could be freed from all of that, erased from existence. It was easier to be a spectator to someone else's life than live her own.

She became progressively more uncertain that she should say anything. Maybe it was fine for her to be like this. She could just slowly fade away, until she was nothing in this world, just like on the other side. Ever since Kasumi's death and disappearance, she'd had these vague dreams about being in a blue prison, and she sometimes wondered if that was where she was going—if she was going to disappear here, and spend the rest of her life in that purgatory.

But then Akira had asked her out to the aquarium, and that had been like the box she lived in being shaken. Engaging with him for real was so different from just watching him, and she'd found herself giving in to all sorts of fantasies, even if she knew they weren't going to happen.

The aquarium had given her another realization, too, something that made all the pieces fit together—Akira and Goro Akechi were definitely, absolutely in love.

She hadn't quite noticed it at first, since well, they were both boys. But she'd read a couple of BL manga a certain friend had shoved at her enthusiastically and shamefully, once—she knew this was a thing. And given how obviously jealous Goro Akechi had been, even she would figure it out. In retrospect, it had been kind of obvious. The reason Akira went along with everything Goro Akechi did was out of love. What other motivation could there be?

Initially, she had thought of Goro Akechi as beyond redemption. He was someone who would murder without batting an eye, he enjoyed fighting and bloodshed, and once, he'd even told Akira that if he betrayed him, he wouldn't hesitate to kill him.

But her opinion of him had slowly been tempered over time, and now, she thought of him rather differently. Seeing that soft spot in his heart around Akira, she'd realized he wasn't quite who she'd thought he was.

She thought—perhaps naively, but it wasn't like she had any other options—that if she could worm her way into their lives, then Akira would be more inclined to trust her, and Goro Akechi might hesitate to pull the trigger on her.

...Even to her, though, this sounded like a paper-thin justification. Lately, she wasn't sure she really believed either of them could or would help her.

She recalled how one of Kasumi's friends was really into idols, and she would often talk about her favorite, about his TV appearances, about his relationships with other band members and other celebrities, and how she'd cried when the media had slammed him over some scandal. She was honest to god in love with this idol she'd never met and felt like she knew him better than anyone.

Lately, she thought that maybe she felt the same way about Akira and Goro Akechi. Like she knew them better than anyone.

It was a bit like the time when she had lurked around corners at school, watching Akira in the hallways. Even when she had hung out with him and Kasumi, her role had never changed. He and Kasumi had interacted, while she had watched.

Back then, she had sometimes imagined Akira and Kasumi dating—what sort of dates they might go on, what they would fight over, how they would make up—she'd devised whole romantic storylines for the two of them. Because even though she'd always had a crush on Akira, and she'd resented Kasumi for dating him, she'd never actually expected to date him herself. That was just unimaginable. That was for people like Kasumi, not for people like her. So she'd imagined Akira and Kasumi together, watched the drama of their lives unfold with envy, but also from a position of safety.

After Kasumi had been erased, her fantasies had simply shifted. She'd begun pairing him with other girls at school people spread rumors about—oh and there were lots of rumors, and filthy rumors, too, about things he did in the hallways, janitor's closets, empty classrooms or club rooms with this that or the other girl. She never repeated such rumors, but she'd quietly listened to all of them, remembered all of them, just for herself. It didn't matter if they weren't true.

Now, there was simply a new character entering Akira Kurusu's story, and she had a front row seat.

—But still, no matter how any idol fan said they were content just to watch and cheer on their favourite, in the end, didn't they actually want to meet their idol and be friends with them for real?

Now walking through a distortion with blaring lights and blurred colors all around, she followed Goro Akechi as he casually cut down the shadows around him.

It was nothing but easy shadows all around, and it was making him get sloppy, and she could see it—she could also see the powerful shadow coming up behind him, and even knowing it was useless, she cried, “Watch out!” and he spun around, blocking the powerful attack with Loki's red-hot blade.

After all the shadows had fallen and melted away, he spent a good minute looking all around him and then muttered, “That damn wind again,” but then moved on.

x x x

She got Goro Akechi's phone number from Akira, and invited him to the park for training. She kind of thought he would turn her down, but he actually showed up.

She started them off with a jog to warm up.

“So you live just outside of Kichijoji,” Goro Akechi said as they jogged, “with your mother and father. Your mother is a housewife, your father is a salaryman who works For Ebisu Manufacturing.”

 _Is he trying to threaten me?_ But she didn't think he would hurt her family. It was an empty threat. He might hurt her, but he had standards. He wouldn't touch people he perceived as fully innocent and uninvolved. “If you can still talk, you're not running fast enough,” she said, and sped up, forcing him to follow.

When they stretched, he tried again. “I already know you've been following me around. Did you think you could hide it from me? You're not very good,” he said, his hands between his thighs as he leaned forward with spread legs. He was actually quite flexible, and could nearly do the splits. Quite unusual for a boy who hadn't been training.

She twitched. She didn't realize he'd noticed. But he _had_ seemed to have sensed a vague something, back in that last distortion. He was probably just guessing, acting like he knew to try to scare her. It was the sort of thing he would do. “I don't know what you're talking about.” She pushed his back quite hard, forcing his nose down to the grass, but he didn't yelp.

“Don't play stupid with me,” he said, though he sounded a bit choked. “You have to know you have no power in this situation.”

“Your back is curving. Arch your back. Arch it.”

He did as told, arching his back to stretch further, and didn't say anything more until she let him up. He got to his feet, winced slightly as he shook out his legs, then took a step toward her, clearly trying to be menacing. “You know what I could do.”

“A cartwheel?”

Goro Akechi scowled at her. “No, I mean—”

“Then we'll start off with basic cartwheels.”

He was in good shape, and he picked things up quickly—it was actually kind of fun to teach him these things. She had never taught anyone else gymnastics before—she was really just repeating what her instructors told her, so she didn't really know what she was doing. But she was surprised by how much she enjoyed it.

“You think Akira will protect you?” he tried again, once they were about thirty minutes in and he was sweating in his track suit.

“I think he's more interested in protecting you.” She'd been scared before, thinking about this. She hadn't thought she'd be able to take it. But she was surprised to realize that now that Goro Akechi was actually threatening her, she wasn't scared. It wasn't like death would be a big change from now, anyway. She'd already been erased. That would just be a silencing of her mind.

She wondered if her parents would mourn, though. Would they mourn Kasumi? At least, then, Kasumi would have someone mourning her. She deserved that.

Goro Akechi reacted like he'd been shot, then breathed a long, aggrieved sigh. “I think you understand that there's no point in you telling anyone what you know. Regular people will just think you're talking nonsense, and if you tell Akira—” he gave her a cold, dead-eyed look. It made her twitch, and she didn't like to look at it, but this sort of thing didn't scare her like it would have, before. She'd been watching him for a long time, now. “—you know what will happen.”

“There's nothing I could tell him that would change anything,” she replied, eyes on the ground. “Why do you want to keep things from him, anyway? You should trust him. He cares about you.”

Goro Akechi scoffed. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“...Well, your relationship isn't my business. But if you hurt him...”

“You'll what?” He gave her a nasty sneer. “What could you possibly do to me?”

She shook her head, bewildered. “Why do you think I'd do anything to you? I'm not out to hurt you.”

He just looked confused. “Bullshit. You're trying to blackmail me somehow, aren't you?”

She just stared at him a moment. “You think everyone is against you, don't you?”

“Aren't you? What do you want? And don't tell me you want to be _friends,_ because I think we both know that's bullshit.”

She couldn't say she was surprised by his response, but it still hurt. And she knew he wouldn't believe the truth. “We're still not done training. Let's get back to it,” she said, and he didn't question her further.

x x x

It was not long after that when, after school, Akira and Goro Akechi visited a new distortion.

On the way there, Goro Akechi was definitely trying to lose her, but having Akira along with him and not telling him what was going on slowed him down, and he never shook her off. There was a moment when Sumire thought she'd lost them—she slipped onto the train one car down from Akira and Akechi, crammed in between a middle-aged salaryman and a twenty-something man in white with glasses and a hat pulled deep over his eyes who strangely seemed to notice her when others didn't, but she was too focused on her goal to pay him any mind.

When she stepped off the train, she actually made eye contact with Goro Akechi once as he looked back at her, but he didn't say anything, because Akira was there.

Eventually, they arrived at a TV station in downtown Tokyo, and the two of them stepped into the distortion. She followed, becoming nothing, as usual.

The air inside the distortion rippled with heat as in front of them lay a massive, multi-story carnival tent. It was definitely on the grotesque side of carnivals. The entrance was a clown face, its mouth being the door—and something about that face was rather evocative of Stephen King. It didn't make you want to go inside.

The two of them circled the tent, looking for a back or side entrance, but there was none. This carnival tent was absolutely air-tight, and there was only one way in: the clown mouth.

“Well, this is ominous,” Akira commented as they approached the entrance. “Guess this is it.”

“Yes, though I can't say I feel good about this. You have all the equipment I told you to bring?” Goro Akechi replied.

“Of course. I even packed us bentos.”

“That was unnecessary.”

“Yours has little octopus-shaped sausages, and an A in seaweed over the rice.”

“That was _completely_ unnecessary.”

“Let's hear you say that again when you get hungry.”

“Agh...” Goro Akechi walked through the entrance, pausing to look back, scanning the area as if he were looking for her, but then he went inside. She followed right behind him, while Akira pulled up the rear, his foot clipping through the space where her leg would have been as he walked.

The moment Akira was inside, jagged teeth came out of the clown face and slammed shut behind him, and they were left in darkness. Then slowly, a line of torches lit around them, showing their path further in.

“...Can't say I'm surprised,” Goro Akechi said with a sigh. “Well, we'll just have to finish off the master here to get out, then.”

“You think he's gonna be a demon clown? Do we get to fight Pennywise?” Akira seemed actually excited about this.

“What? Who's Pennywise?” Goro Akechi turned back to Akira.

“Wow, you haven't even seen the movie? Someone's out of touch.”

“I have better things to do than watch...” Goro Akechi waved a hand, “a horror movie about a _clown_ , I assume.”

Akira broke into a grin. “Ohh, I see, you're _chicken._ I didn't know badass Goro Akechi was scared of horror movies!”

“...Let's move on,” Goro Akechi said, and he was turned away from Akira, but she could see by the light of the torches that he was blushing.

“I can tell this one is gonna be special,” Akira hummed as the two boys made their way deeper into the darkness, their silent observer following.


	14. The Palace of Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...if y'all are still with me after chapter 12, I highly doubt I can do anything to drive you away, but uhhhh dubcon ahoy.
> 
> Sometimes I think “what am I even fucking writing” but then yolo. I rated this damn thing E, I'm gonna make it worth the E.

Akira followed Goro down the dark, torchlit pathway deeper into the distortion.

“Hey,” Akira called out, and Goro turned back to look at him. Lit by the torches hovering below him, his masked face looked both beautiful and ominous—befitting of an avatar of brutal justice.

Well, not like Akira quite thought of him that way. He couldn't really fit Goro in any boxes, heroic or villainous. Akira had asked him details about their targets, and he'd challenged Goro's conviction for some cases, but it felt more like playing devil's advocate than sincere opposition.

Maybe it was just easier to let Goro make these decisions. Maybe there was no absolute justice, and Goro's justice was a sort of justice, and who was Akira to argue? He had no such convictions, and it wasn't as if he had any particular love for those Goro destroyed.

The only one Akira could feel certain about was the one who had killed Kasumi. There were a lot of days when he wasn't sure what mattered to him anymore, but when he had a connection like that—like with her, or with Sumire, or with Goro—then he would commit to it. He would follow through. When someone counted on him, he would be there.

But thinking about Kasumi and Sumire wasn't taking his mind anywhere good, so he cut off that trail of thought.

“Just wanted to look at your handsome face,” Akira said with an obnoxious grin, and Goro rolled his eyes at him before turning ahead again. Though it wasn't like Akira was lying.

After a few more steps, out of the darkness, there came the sound of a heavy switch flicking, and a spotlight came down from above to light a door just ahead. It was a plain grey metal door with a paper sign taped to it that read, _Auditions._

“On theme for the executive of a TV station, I suppose,” Goro muttered as if he were talking to himself, opening the door.

They heard the sound of more switches flicking as lights came on above them, bringing the room to almost medical brightness. Immediately, the room became scorching hot.

The room had polished wooden floors like a dance studio and a long table at the back, and rows of chairs on the other side. There was nobody in the room—but it wasn't _empty._ Leaning against every chair in the room was a cardboard cutout. They were all clowns—different kinds of clowns, some classic and some modern, some crying and some laughing, some horror-style and some like elegant dolls. There was another cardboard clown with a camera on a tripod, and leaning against the seats behind the table at the back were more clowns with name tags that said things like _casting director._

“So...he has a rather two-dimensional view of his staff?” Akira quipped as they stepped into the room.

“Be careful. The cutouts aren't just cardboard,” Goro shot back.

Looking closer, Akira could see eyes on cardboard swivelling to watch their approach. The cutouts were all shadows.

“Shit,” Akira muttered. “Do you think we can take them all?”

“I don't really want to find out,” Goro replied dryly.

“Hold it.”

Hearing a voice from the side, Akira turned to face a cutout clown dressed like a security guard.

“If you wanna get an audition, you gotta get in line.” The cutout's mouth never moved, but it sort of twitched a little as it talked. Then the whole cutout tilted over to the side, indicating the seats with the rows of cutouts.

“I'm Goro Akechi,” Goro stepped forward to say to the cutout. “I'd like to be let through.”

The cutout's eyes looked him up and down. “Oh, it's you. Yeah, go on through.” And the cutout relaxed, leaning back against the wall.

“The perks of fame, huh?” Akira commented, and the two of them headed toward the door at the far side of the room.

But before they could touch the door, another voice called out to stop them. “Oh, if it isn't Goro! Stay here a while!”

Goro turned around to face one of the cutouts behind the casting table, and Akira's eyes shifted over there as well. A clown cutout with a smiling face and the name tag _K. Motonabe._

“Let's just go,” Goro muttered, going straight for the door, but when he tried turning the knob, it wouldn't open. He looked back.

“Oh, you can't get through there without my permission,” said the Motonabe cutout. “So come over here.”

His face stiff and unreadable, Goro went up to the casting desk. “Hello, Mr. Motonabe.”

“Goro, so good to see you. What a stroke of luck. You've always avoided me before, but I won't let you get away, this time.” Instantly, the cutout turned into an unassuming middle-aged man in a suit, sitting in a plastic chair with his hands folded over the table.

“What's this about?” Akira muttered to Goro, voice low so only he would hear.

Goro leaned toward him to say, with no small amount of disgust, “Motonabe is a casting director. It's an open secret at the station that he likes underage boys.” Then turning to the man with the sort of beaming smile that could kill a man, he said, “I think I'm a little old for you, Mr. Motonabe.”

“Well, I'll make an exception for such a pretty face,” replied the man.

“Do we fight?” Akira asked Goro, immediately tensing.

“Don't be stupid,” Goro hissed back at him. _“Count_ the shadows in here, you moron. Even if they're all weak, there's no way we can take them all at once.”

Akira's eyes swept the room. There were more than twenty cutouts. And then what if more came in through the far door?

“We run back out the door, use the doorway as a choke point to hold them off,” Akira suggested.

But Goro didn't even respond to him. “So what do you want, Mr. Motonabe?”

“Oh, nothing extravagant, nothing too crazy. I'm a gentle man, not like some of the sharks here. I'd just like a good old-fashioned blowjob.” He patted his leg as if to say, _come._

When Goro took a step toward the table, Akira grabbed his arm. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Goro turned back to him. “Do you want to risk our lives, or do you want us to get through here pain-free?”

“You call this _pain free?_ ”

“It's just a blowjob.”

“You don't know that. This could be a trap. He could cut your throat when you get close.”

Goro shook his head. “If this is based off the master of the distortion's cognition, that's highly unlikely. Motonabe just doesn't have that kind of reputation. Based on what I know of the man, he probably will let us through.”

“ _Probably_.” Akira's fingers tightened around Goro's upper arm. Goro tried to shake him off, but Akira held fast. “I'm not letting you do this.”

Goro shoved Akira away violently, knocking him to the floor. “You have absolutely no authority over what I do,” he spat. “This is my decision. So stay out of it.”

Akira sat there on the ground, frozen, watching as Goro tossed away his red mask, then dropped to his knees and crawled under the table.

From his perspective behind Goro, Akira couldn't quite see everything, but he heard the sound of unbuckling and unzipping, and saw some dark hair and flesh as Goro's head moved to the shadow's crotch. After a moment, he got the sense that maybe he shouldn't watch, and turned his head away. The room was uncomfortably hot under the lights, but there was this strange indoor breeze blowing that sent a shiver down Akira's spine.

“Mm, not bad,” the shadow expelled a sigh, “But you can do a little better than that, can't you? Show me you're having a good time.”

Goro immediately acquiesced, letting out a low, smothered moan. The wet smacking sounds got louder, too loud to ignore, and just listening to it, Akira couldn't help but get hard. He got to his feet and turned around—that was a mistake. All the cutouts in the audience were there, looking into empty space or at the walls. A couple of them were staring at the sight with interest.

 _So everyone knows it's happening, but they turn the other way, huh?_ Akira thought with a scowl, and closed his eyes. Hearing Goro moan on this man's cock just made him imagine a scene almost as vividly as if he had been looking. Goro's hair falling into his eyes, face flushed as he took it all the way to the base. Goro would use a little bit of teeth for sure, just like a threat, asserting _he_ was in control, here, that was just the sort of thing that would make Akira want to fuck his face—

Akira covered his ears, but after a minute, he cheated, relaxing one hand to let a few sounds in again. Goro actually fucking sounded like he was on the edge of orgasm, with the show he was putting on.

And then there was a weird sloshing sound, and recognizing that noise, Akira spun around, hand rising to his mask. A harsh gust of wind swept over all the papers on the table, blowing them to the floor, and the middle-aged man in a suit transformed into a huge, red-skinned oni with horns and fangs to match. With a beastlike moan, the creature kicked over over the table in front of it hard enough for it to break in two when it hit the ground.

Goro clearly anticipated Akira's reaction, though—his hand shot back in a _don't move_ gesture that froze Akira in his tracks. His lips were still wrapped around what had now become a massive, red oni cock, his jaw stretched as far as it would go to suck on the head, both his hands working the spit-slicked shaft.

Akira stared as Goro slowly sank his mouth down over the oni's member, but he was only able to take about a third of it. He needed both hands to get around the massive girth of the creature, pumping between his lips and the wiry hair of the oni's balls in a steady rhythm.

“ _Ngh_ , you've got a good tongue, human,” the oni growled, grabbing Goro's hair with a clawed hand to push him further down, and Akira saw Goro spasm and choke—and fuck if that didn't make Akira harder, his cock straining against his pants painfully as the oni dragged Goro up and down by his hair, and Akira watched Goro drool all over its pulsing member.

Then the oni looked up at Akira and bared its protruding fangs in a vicious grin. “Enjoying the show, human? Go ahead and jack off, I won't stop ya. Here, I'll show ya a nice cumshot, since you've been such a sport.” And then he yanked Goro off his dick by the hair and jerked his cock a few times. The thick vein running along its side throbbed, and then it was shooting strips of white cum over Goro's face as he coughed and gasped for air.

Then without any warning at all, the oni was gone, there was a clicking sound, and Goro was kneeling there with heaving shoulders in front of a cardboard cutout.

“You okay?” Akira approached him immediately, but Goro was already getting up, wiping at his face with one hand.

“Well, that was a surprise. Fuck, that was a lot of cum,” Goro commented as he turned around, and Akira saw just want he meant—it was thick all over his face, dripping down his neck and into his collar. Akira's eyes swept over him, then wandered lower to see a tent in Goro's pants. Immediately, he looked away.

“Door's open, though,” Goro added, pointing over to the door onward, which was slowly swinging open. He didn't fail to notice the direction of Akira's gaze, though. His eyes flicked down to Akira's crotch as well, and he broke into a smirk. “Unless you want to stay here so I can do you, too?”

“No!” Akira snapped, and he shoved past Goro, heading for the door. “Let's go, we don't even know if it'll stay open.”

Goro didn't say anything as he followed Akira, and the next door led into more torch-lined darkness.

They spent a moment in silence as Goro pulled some wet towels out of their bag and wiped himself off—he had a bag of them for situations where they might get dirty—and then they moved on.

Once they were walking again, Akira finally got his damn boner to calm down, but his mind never really left what had just happened.

At this point, he was aware that Goro was into him. He wasn't that blind. With someone like Goro, though, the question of exactly what _into him_ meant was always up in the air. He highly doubted Goro wanted to hold hands and ride the Ferris wheel with him. And that wasn't really what Akira was seeking, either. He wasn't sure what he wanted.

If this had been anyone else, Akira would have fucked them ten times over by now. But he had this weird, undefined anxiety about Goro—like if he crossed that line carelessly, he was going to fuck everything up, he would get burned hard, and Goro—something bad would happen. Goro wasn't the kind of person you could fuck with in that way. Maybe it was just what that cognition had said in that strange distortion that was getting to him.

“So have you done that before?” Akira broke the silence.

“Huh?” Goro seemed confused a moment, like his mind was elsewhere. “Oh, you mean sucked a dick?” He snorted, as if that were answer enough.

“No, I mean...” Akira paused, trying to think of how to word it, but Goro cut him off.

“I've never sucked _his_ dick before, if that's what you're asking.”

“That's not what I mean.” Akira spun around to face him.

Seeing his face, Goro's lips drew into a tight line. “Oh, I get it. You want to know Goro Akechi's whole sad story, huh? You want some dirt so you can use it to explain away everything in your head? _Oh, no wonder he's like that._ ”

Akira frowned. “I thought it might be good to talk about it.”

“Talk? You want me to talk?” Goro laughed as he settled into a relaxed stance, leaning on one leg with a hand on his hip. “Why? What's the point? Do you know how many case workers and counselors I've recited my whole life story to? It means nothing to me. Talk about it enough times, and it's like reading out the phone book.”

“...I guess I just want to know about you, that's all.”

Goro's expression changed slightly, and his eyes shifted away. “There was just one guy, when I was a kid. I hardly even remember it that well. I'm good at avoiding those kinds of situations, and I don't need that as currency. You can avoid it if you have the leverage—it's the desperate and vulnerable who get it.”

 _And you're not desperate and vulnerable, is that what you're trying to say?_ Akira looked up at him through lowered lashes. But he wouldn't say that out loud. “Thanks for telling me.”

Goro snorted. “Sex abuse stories are as common as grass. If you want to get off on hearing some nasty stories, walk into any elementary school. ...It's not like just knowing this stuff makes you understand any better,” he muttered, almost like an afterthought, and then he walked past Akira to move on ahead.

Akira knew Goro was just abrasive by nature and half of it didn't mean anything, and usually, he could let it roll off his back, but this time, he couldn't help but feel pissed. He grabbed Goro's wrist as he made to go past.

“What?” Goro turned back to him.

“...So then what would make me understand?” Akira asked.

Goro actually seemed to consider that question, taking a moment to think. “You would have to actually be put in my position. Not, you know,” he waved a hand, “like it would have to be sex abuse specifically, but put in a position that tests you. I think if you live a life where you've never been challenged, you don't know who you really are.”

“I've never been really challenged?” Akira countered, his tone heating up. “What about finding Kasumi dead? What about that time I was arrested for a murder I didn't commit? What about everything we do now? That all just doesn't _count_ to you?” There was something in the back of his mind telling him that there was more, there was something else, and _that_ was why he was really mad, but he couldn't pin it down, and it slipped out of his fingers.

Goro seemed a little surprised by his anger. “...Fair enough, I suppose.” He shrugged. “But I also saved your ass, and I've been holding your hand all throughout our work together. You've never really been alone. I think if you were honestly on your own, you wouldn't have what it takes to handle it.”

Goro's arrogance was nothing new. But that wasn't the part that pissed Akira off. “You think I'm not alone? Where the hell did you get that idea?”

Goro blinked. “What? I see you at school, you're popular and outgoing. It's shocking how many people like you, considering your reputation.”

 _I thought you, of all people, would understand how that is,_ Akira thought, biting down his anger. But maybe he'd been naive. He couldn't expect Goro to know the way all his friendships felt fake, the way he deliberately maintained them in the vain hope that they would get somewhere. What did any of these relationships mean, really? Just friendships of convenience, because they went to the same school. They had no deep-level goals or values in common. ( _Did Akira even have any deep-level goals or values? He thought he had, once.)_

Sometimes, he had dreams about hanging out at a cafe with a bunch of blurry dream characters and a cat, talking about things he couldn't remember. And then he would wake up crying because it had felt too real, like that world was the real one and this one was fake, and he wanted to go back.

 _Don't forget us,_ they would tell him, every time. _You have to remember us, no matter what. You belong here._

Some days, it felt like Goro's presence was the only thing keeping from sleeping forever to stay in that dream. But he got himself out of bed because Goro depended on him.

... _And Sumire,_ he thought with an added pang of guilt. He would have to call her up after this was over.

Eventually, he just sighed, and started off again, striding ahead of Goro. “You're popular at school, too.”

x x x

The next door they approached led to an even bigger room. This one had a high ceiling decked with all sorts of lights and filters, and there were cameras and dollies and film equipment everywhere, staffed by more cardboard cutout clowns.

“You're late!” came a bark as the two of them walked into the studio, and they looked over to see a clown cutout with a _director_ badge standing ahead of them. “I told you how expensive it is to delay a shoot! Now get over there!” The cutout tilted over toward the set—it was a just a green screen.

“What do you want us to do, Director?” Goro asked.

“Did you even read the script, you useless hack? We're filming a fight scene, here. Something to get your blood pumping! If you can't do it, your buddy can take over, whatever. But if you want through that door, you have to give us a show.”

“That seems to be the theme here,” Akira commented.

“So who will I be fighting?” Goro asked, and his assumption that he would be the one doing it made Akira's head snap over to him with an irritated look, which Goro ignored.

The director cutout twitched over in the direction of the set, and three cutouts transformed into a great bird, a six-armed woman with swords, and a lion-dog.

“Doesn't matter if you kill 'em, though, we've got more,” said the cutout. “You've got to keep fighting until I'm satisfied with the scene, I don't care if we have to be here all night. I want to see _blood_ and _passion_.”

“Goro,” Akira said in a low voice, leaning over. “Let me do it.”

Goro turned his head to him and gave him an irritated look. “No. I'm the stronger fighter.”

“I want to do it.”

Goro sighed in exasperation. “You're the one with the healing skills, it makes more sense for me to fight, and you can patch me up if necessary.”

Akira wondered if Goro had done something like this before in the past, with no one there to patch him up—undoubtedly, he had.

Akira just shook his head. “Let me do it.”

“Let us talk for a minute,” Goro said with a smile to the director cutout, then he pulled Akira over to the back of the room for a whispered conversation. “Just what is your deal here? What is this about?”

...Akira didn't have any good answers for him, though, and he didn't say anything.

“Oh, I get it,” Goro leaned back, folding his arms with a sneer. “Trying to protect me like a dashing gentleman only works if you're actually stronger than me, genius.”

Akira knew this was true. But still. He raised a hand to his head and fiddled with a curl of hair. “...It's not like I want to protect you,” he said, which was half a lie, “...I just don't want to watch you get hurt.” What the director had said— _blood and passion—_ sounded ominous. It felt like Goro was too eager to get hurt. Maybe he was just imagining it. But he didn't like it.

Goro gave him a look, then unbuttoned his white jacket at tossed it at Akira. “Here, for your princely aspirations,” he said with a smirk. And then he tied up his hair and rummaged through their bags, downed the liquids from various dubious-looking bottles, pulling out things that looked like shrine talismans and occult jewellery to hang them around his neck and snap them over his wrists. He got his sword and gun, an extra knife in his belt, and pockets full of various items, and went onto the set.

“Lights! Camera! Action!”

The fight started off normally. The enemies were stronger than what they usually fought, but not beyond Goro, and he dispatched them in a few minutes.

But the director didn't seem satisfied. “No, no no! That was a mess! You seemed absolutely bored! I need to see _passion!_ I need to see _blood!_ Don't give me this limp-dicked shit! Where are my stuntmen?!”

In response to the director's cry, a couple more cutouts transformed into shadows, and Goro squared off against them.

These ones were tougher, and Akira could see him sweating—a few swipes of one angel's blade sliced through the side of his arm, cut across his cheek, but the wounds were shallow.

The director was still not satisfied. “Why the hell are you holding back?! I can tell when someone is faking it, pumping out some inoffensive, milquetoast, bloodless scenes where everyone walks away with a smile! I don't want fucking James Bond, here! Real violence is nasty! Real violence is powerful! Show everyone the beast that lies at the bottom of all humanity, a scene they'll never forget, even if they want to!”

Another cutout morphed into a shadow, a dark-skinned man in light armor with a blade held casually at his side, and Goro faced this one as well, shoulders heaving from exertion. His face shone plainly with sweat under the harsh lights as he lowered his stance, sword raised and opposite hand on his mask. Akira's grip tightened on jacket in his hands.

This shadow was fast.

When Goro lifted his mask, the shadow used the instant his vision was blocked to dive forward in a thrust straight at his gut. Goro sidestepped, but these continuous fights were slowing him down, and the blade cut through his left side with surgical precision. The cut was so fast, Akira didn't even realize at first that he'd been hit—there was a strange gust of wind through the room, and then a gush of blood that came after, spraying over the floor, to show him what had happened.

“Gah!” Goro yelled, pitching forward, but he didn't waste the opportunity, closing toward the right of the enemy—which had a longer reach—with an arc of his blade while he summoned Robin Hood, aiming an arrow at the shadow's heart.

Akira jerked forward, meaning to go help, but Goro yelled back, “Stay!” and he hesitated.

There was a wild clanging sound as Goro's sword rebounded off the enemy's armor, and Goro cried out again, a slice opening up in his own side.

“Just use magic!” Akira yelled at him.

“Don't fucking backseat drive me!” Goro snapped back, tossing away his sword.

The shadow struck again, and again, and Goro dodged both strikes, but it was keeping him on the defensive, not giving him an opening to counterattack. Goro sidestepped around it counter clockwise, keeping away from its sword arm, but with each step, he was spraying more blood on the floor, and the earlier gust of wind became a whirl that circled the room, sweeping over the cameras and equipment, and making the cardboard cutouts rattle.

“Stop holding back!” the director yelled.

Then, the shadow paused in its assault, lowering its stance as its form began to glow. Akira was familiar with this.

“It's gonna hit hard!” Akira yelled, expecting an annoyed yell back, but there wasn't.

Goro reached into his pocket and tossed something in the air, and then he pitched forward like he was falling, but instead of hitting the ground, he fell into a beastlike crouch and screamed, “L—”

Then there was a deafening bang and a flash of light, and Akira closed his eyes, and couldn't hear the rest.

When the light faded, Akira opened his eyes to see spots dancing in his vision. Every cardboard cutout in the room had been knocked to the ground, half the cameras were on the floor, and Goro had the shadow pinned underneath him. Akira still couldn't see very well, but it looked as if stripes were dancing across Goro's form as he swiped at the creature with his bare hands, yelling something that sounded like it should be words. Black ooze splattered halfway across the room to hit the green screen behind Goro, and then there was a smack, which Akira belatedly realized was the shadow's severed arm hitting the floor. Goro had ripped its arm off, and he was continuing to dig into the shadow's torso as it spasmed on the ground.

“Die die die you fucking piece of shit! How does that feel!”

Akira finally pieced out what was coming out of Goro's mouth.

Goro kept going for a long time, beating and tearing at the remains of the shadow, heedless of the ooze splattering around the cutouts and equipment around him, splattered over the floor and dripping from the ceiling.

Finally, his hands stilled, and he got to his feet again with an unsteady sway and spun around, lowering himself into that same beastlike stance with his lips pulled back in a snarl, and his eyes were _glowing red._

“Aaaand scene!” The director cutout called. “Beautiful! Now _that's_ real action. You gave me a hard-on, that was so good!”

Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Goro fell to his knees. His bird mask tumbled away, swept away in a gust of wind, and he spat a mouthful of blood onto the green-painted flooring.

Akira didn't waste a second, pushing his mask up to his hair to summon Isis to heal him as he rushed onto the set, catching him before he could slump further, cutting off the remaining ribbons of his undershirt to plunge his fingers into the wounds at his sides. He couldn't afford to be gentle, here.

Goro screamed and clung to him, grabbing at Akira's jacket as Akira dug his fingers deeper into Goro's sides, feeling the depth of the wounds. “I've got you, it's okay,” Akira murmured, but he wasn't even sure Goro could hear him. Goro jerked with each cool pulse Akira sent into his body, but he never let go, his hands gripping the back of Akira's jacket while he buried his face against Akira's chest.

Once Akira was done, he leaned his head forward to let his mask slide down, and continued to hold Goro until he had caught his breath.

“...Thanks,” Goro said finally, raising his head, and before he turned his face away, Akira caught sight of tear tracks on his face. “I owe you one.”

Akira just nodded, and stood up, offering Goro a hand, which Goro took. The both of them looked over to the far door, which was now swinging open.

“You good to move on?” Akira asked as he fished out the last damp cloth from the bag to hand to Goro, who started wiping the blood and ooze off his face.

“Of course,” Goro said with a snort, then tossed the now-filthy towel aside, picking his jacket up off the floor where Akira had dropped it. He was pale as a sheet and could barely stand up, and this was obviously ninety percent bravado, but Akira kind of liked that bravado of his.

“All right, tough guy,” Akira said with a grin. “Good thing you've got my help.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Goro said with an eyeroll as he staggered after Akira to the door. “What would I do without you?”

He said it sarcastically, but Akira knew he meant it.


	15. The Third Inevitability?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp for the two people who are still reading this, I hope ya like violence, because it's time for more. Now that I've driven everyone away with my problematic kinks *cracks knuckles* 
> 
> I've belatedly realized I'm just roasting myself with these director characters... I think...the real villain of this palace may just be...the author...

Passing through the next door led to a staircase, which lead to a sprawling space that looked like the bastard lovechild of a TV studio and a cheap carnival. Cardboard clown cutouts stood everywhere, and film sets and equipment dotted the place. Then there were cages labeled “freak show” filled with vaguely familiar TV personalities, and stages that had cutouts of clowns who looked like celebrities doing everything from singing and dancing to publicizing scandals to dying on stage. Some of it resembled celebrity gossip that Akira had heard second-hand, other parts seemed like movie plots. All a part of the same show, apparently.

The sets dotted around the place looked a little fancier than the green screen room they'd gone through, which perhaps indicated they were making progress. At once point, they passed through a massive central "big top" area with a ring stage in the center and audience seats all around, but nothing there impeded their progress, so they moved on.

Most of all, though, there were cardboard cutout clowns. Clowns, clowns, and more clowns. It was creepy, and it made every single dramatic scene that unfolded before them seem somehow grotesque.

There was the sound of noise and bustle around them, but it was all eerily still, and nothing moved.

When they emerged from the stairwell, Akira initially tensed and went on guard, but seeing none of them move, he asked Goro, “Why aren't any of them attacking?”

“That's just not the way this distortion works,” Goro said as they casually strolled through the sprawling studio. “Consider how we got in here. We went through an audition, and then we got a role in a show. We got a foot in the door, so to speak. That's how you get into show business.”

“Guess you would know.”

Goro turned to him with a little smirk. “Oh, do you watch my TV appearances?”

“Not interested,” Akira answered sincerely, and Goro scowled.

“Anyway,” Goro continued, “The master of this distortion seems to care about putting on a show rather than simply coming to fight us. I figure there'll be more where that came from.”

“If we have to fight again, can you fight?” Akira asked, examining Goro out of the corner of his eye. He was trying to hide it, but he seemed pretty tired.

“Let's find a good place to rest a while and eat those bentos of yours,” Goro said, and hearing that, Akira knew he was definitely tired.

They found a safe room—even if it seemed they wouldn't be attacked, no sense risking it—and sitting at the counter of what looked like a rather tiny corner dressing room, both of them facing the mirrors, they opened up the box lunches Akira had packed.

“What did you do in that last fight?” Akira asked as he began eating at a leisurely pace. Goro was shoveling his food down like he was quite hungry.

Having spent the past while thinking about it, it seemed clear to him that Goro had pulled something in that last fight that he didn't want Akira seeing. The use of that flashbang had been unnecessary at a moment when the enemy was already pausing to charge its attack—and furthermore, there would have been a significant risk that the director cognition would say, “I couldn't see anything! Now we can't use that footage at all! Film it over again!” But shadows could be stupid in strange ways—it wasn't like there was actually a person in there, they were just fragments of a mind—so luckily, the “footage” had been accepted.

So then the only reason Goro would have done that would be because he didn't want _Akira_ seeing what he was doing.

Akira did have this strange gut feeling that Goro was hiding things from him. He couldn't pin down exactly why he thought so, he just did. Maybe it was the specific things he skirted around—he was fairly willing to talk about his mother, but when Akira asked about his father, Goro said he'd never met him, and Akira could tell he was lying. Why would he seem so angry about someone he'd never met? Maybe if he hadn't known Goro as well, he wouldn't have been able to tell, but Goro put on this forced nonchalance when he was pissed, and it stuck out.

Goro also avoided talking in detail about his time in the Metaverse before he'd met Akira. And he seemed to know suspiciously a lot about cognitive psience, and when Akira pressed him on it, he simply said, _“It's none of your business.”_

Strangely, though, what got Akira the most was simply that he thought Robin Hood didn't suit him. It made him wonder if he really knew Goro, but it also made him wonder if Goro was being honest about only being able to summon one persona. But why hide something like that?

“Why do you ask?” Goro responded to his question with a question as he shoveled down rice.

Akira could just be blunt and demand what Goro was hiding, but that wouldn't be fun. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself, and I was hoping I could enjoy a show like that again. It was sexy.”

Goro choked on his rice, coughing it back up into the box, and Akira's grin widened.

“Very wild and animalistic. So is that what does it for you? Black blood and shadow guts? Guess I can't compete with that.”

Goro was bright red as he continued to cough, and Akira patted his back, fully expecting to get swatted away, which Goro did.

“And here I thought you'd be horrified. I should have known you were just a pervert,” Goro scowled, stabbing at his rice with his chopsticks, not really eating it anymore.

Akira's lashes lowered slightly as he leaned an elbow against the dressing room counter in front of him, turning to look at Goro. _You think I'd judge you for getting a little too into battles? For being a little too bloodthirsty, a little out of control?_ “Have you been holding back around me?”

Goro hesitated a moment before answering, “Yes.”

Akira wouldn't deny it was a little bit terrifying to watch Goro absolutely lose it in a fight, but it was terrifying in the way of bolting straight down a steep slope on skiis. You know it's dangerous, you should slow down, but you'd rather just see how fast you can go.

“You worried what might happen?”

Goro hesitated longer, this time, looking at the reflection in front of him, and Akira's eyes followed his. He remembered the red glow of those eyes, and shivered.

“...I know what I'm capable of. And I'm not sure I can stop myself, sometimes.” He looked down at his half-eaten bento, chopsticks still. “...I know it's a liability, in a cooperative situation. I'm just used to fighting alone.”

That was a pretty heavy admission, for Goro. It was about as close to admitting weakness as he would get. Akira wondered if perhaps it was fighting in the Metaverse alone that had gotten him like this—he'd had to push himself to survive. Or was it that he'd survived because he was like that to begin with? Because he could push himself to the last and fight beyond the capabilities of his body or his mind? It was frankly impressive.

He wondered how many times Goro must have dragged himself back from the abyss, before he'd had Akira ready to heal him.

“I've got your back,” Akira said. “I'll make sure we get out alive.”

Goro chuckled, but he wasn't smiling. “If you're going to be cocky, you need to be good enough to merit it. You can barely beat me in a fight when I'm holding back.” He paused there, but he didn't go back to eating, so Akira waited for him to continue. “I just don't want...” he said at the tiniest mutter before trailing into nothing. “Never mind.” And he went back to eating.

Akira wanted to push, but he knew Goro wasn't going to give him anything now. He could tease him, but somehow, he didn't want to make a jab at him right when he'd just made himself about as vulnerable as he ever would. So Akira just went back to his food, and then they sorted out their inventory and moved on.

x x x

After winding through more of this carnival-studio expanse, they went up a stairway to reach another choke point: a film studio similar to the one they'd passed through before. This time, though, instead of a green screen, the set was an industrial-looking room like a factory or something with pipes and metal walkways overhead. Maybe the sort of place you might find yakuza doing a drug deal. And like the rest of the palace, with all its bright stage lights, this room was hot. Hotter than before, and Akira immediately started sweating under his coat, and the temperature put him on edge. His senses felt heightened, his eyes sweeping over every corner of the room, scanning for possible threats, but all he found was cardboard.

The director clown cutout here wore a French pierrot-style costume with a teardrop on one cheek and a beret on his head, and his manner leaned more toward refined and stuck up than impatient and angry. Goro approached him directly, and Akira followed close behind him, trying not to show how tense he was.

“Oh, we finally have our cast?” the voice came out from the cardboard. “Though I'm not sure we can expect much...” the eyes on the cardboard roved up and down the pair of them. “I like your clothes,” he pointed to Akira, “but the prince aesthetic is exceptionally tacky.”

Akira snerked, but Goro ignored the jab and got straight to the point, asking, “What do we have to do to get let through here?”

“I'm here to make some real _art,_ ” said the director, “None of that trashy nonsense you might have starred in before. My films depict real, true, _raw_ and authentic human experience! Psychological realism! Stripping the human mind down to its core! That's what really gets _me_ hard!”

Barely five words out of this guy's mouth, and already he was sounding more obnoxious than the last director.

“So what do we have to do?” Goro asked.

“Give me a scene that will make me cry,” said the cutout, tilting over toward the set. A bunch of clowns stood there in ominous formation, hunched and downcast in a circle around the center of the set where it seemed the director indicated he wanted a star to go. “One of you, either is fine. I just want to see your pathos. Real art is all about passion, _suffering_. So show me something I'll never forget.”

Akira immediately stepped forward. “All right, I'll—”

“I'll handle this,” Goro cut him off, and a brief gust of wind surrounded him as he did.

“...Excuse us,” Akira said to the director, and then he grabbed Goro's arm and hauled him into the corner to hiss at him, “What are you doing? You're exhausted. Let me do this.”

“I know my limits better than you, and I can handle this,” Goro snapped.

Akira leaned in closer to him to whisper sharply, “You don't even know what they're going to do. It doesn't look like a straight fight, like last time. ...It could be anything.”

“Exactly why I should be the one to handle this. I think I'm the better actor of the two of us.”

“Do you _honestly_ think passing this trial is going to be about _acting?_ ” Just looking over at those cutouts, Akira had a bad feeling. None of those clowns were smiling. This whole room gave him a bad feeling, got his heart racing for no reason. He knew nothing good would happen here.

“Probably not, but all the more reason I should be the one to handle this. You can heal me after.”

“I can't heal you if you're _dead_.”

“Don't be dramatic. I've survived worse than some film set.” Goro turned to walk back toward the director as if this was all decided, but Akira grabbed his shoulder.

“ _No.”_

Goro turned back to him and scowled. “What?”

“I'm not letting you do it.” Akira gripped his shoulder tight. Goro tried to push him off, but Akira dug in harder.

Goro grabbed his wrist, thumbs digging into the pressure point there, and twisted his arm off by force. “You're not in a position to tell me what to do,” he said sharply. “Have you forgotten what our agreement was about?”

“Wasn't I supposed to be your partner? Someone who keeps you in check?” Akira spat back at him, and Goro dropped his hand like he was surprised. He looked away.

“...I wish you could. But you can't. Sorry, Akira, this is my mission, not yours.” And then he turned to walk back toward the set.

But then he was suddenly yanked backward—by Akira grabbing him by the cape and dragging him back. “I'm not letting you,” he repeated. “We'll think up some other way through. I'm not letting you go out there to have—whatever the _hell_ they plan to do done to you on that set.”

“What the _fuck_ , Akira?” Goro struggled against him, but Akira just clung harder, wrapping one hand in Goro's cape while the other grabbed his lapel. “What gives you the right to decide what I do?”

Akira had no right—no right at all. He was just gripped by this undefinable, irrational terror that he was sending Goro off to die, and his heart was rattling as if _he_ were the one dying. He would do anything he could to hold Goro back, he didn't care.

“Why are you so fucking eager to throw yourself in harm's way?!” Akira yelled, no longer caring at all about the cognitions observing them, as Goro shoved against his face, trying to pry him off. That strange wind was rising again, coming up from a whirlpool at their feet. “Are you that much of a masochist, or do you just not care?!”

“That's none of your fucking _business!_ ” Goro finally managed to get him off, shoving Akira hard enough to slam him into the wall. “Stop trying to control me!”

“ _Control_ you? I just don't want to watch you get—brutally beaten, or tortured, or eviscerated in every hole, or whatever other sick shit they decide is _pathos_!”

Goro's anger crumbled for just a moment, revealing an expression so raw it hurt to look at, but he quickly stiffened his face again and shook his head. “Maybe consider how I feel about it, Akira.” Then he turned away.

Akira wasn't even thinking. He just had to stop Goro, whatever it took.

When Goro started walking back to the stage again, Akira lunged forward, grabbing him by his cape again to yank his face back into Akira's fist.

Goro staggered a couple steps, clearly shocked, but when Akira followed up with a second, aiming for the gut, Goro turned to the side to evade it and retaliated with a knee to the stomach so fast that Akira didn't even tense his gut in time, and he dropped to the floor, completely winded.

As Akira lay on his back, struggling to get air, he tried to call out, but all he could manage was a strangled sound that only vaguely sounded like _“Goro...please...”_ and he was sure Goro couldn't even hear it over the sound of the rushing wind. Akira forced himself up, getting to his knees and scrabbling along the ground towards Goro, but he still couldn't breathe. Forcing his muscles to move on no oxygen was making his eyes water, but he couldn't allow himself to stop. If he let Goro go, he was going to regret it for the rest of his life.

He saw Goro walking toward the set, telling the director he would take the role, and the director gave him some more instructions. Normally, after getting winded, Akira would be starting to get his air back by this point, but for some reason he didn't understand, he still couldn't breathe, couldn't move. He was choking on nothing. All he could do was watch as Goro headed over to the set and took up position in the center, that building wind continuing to swirl around him, rattling all the cardboard cutouts in the room.

When the cardboard cutouts all morphed into shadows, clustered around Goro, Akira tried to scream, but nothing came out. All he could see was a bulkhead slamming down and gunshots as he pressed himself helplessly against the cold metal wall, suffocating in the hot air of the engine room as he looked for some way, any way through. Everything else was blanked out of his consciousness, so it wasn't until some immeasurable length of time later that he started to hear a girl's voice screaming, then a hand grabbing at his shoulder and shaking him, wrenching him around.

A girl's masked face was suddenly right there in front of him, blood dripping out from under her mask. “Help me, Senpai!” she said, then ripped her mask off, summoning a dancing Persona that ripped through the hordes of shadows that were suddenly all rushing toward them at once, claws and blades and fangs bared.

Akira didn't know what was going on. He didn't have time to think.

He reacted reflexively, tearing off his own mask to fight the the mob that surrounded them. He couldn't even count how many there were—there were three on his side, him and Goro and Sumire, caught up in a wild tangle with almost too many shadows to even fit in the room, filling it from floor to ceiling, some crawling on the ground, others flying around the lights at the ceiling. Akira and Sumire were back-to-back, but Goro was across the room, fighting on his own, surrounded by six enemies.

“Let's go!” Akira pointed over toward Goro, and Sumire nodded, understanding immediately. The two of them attempted to carve a path toward Goro, but they had their hands full just defending themselves. With all the blurs of bodies, monstrous and human-like, seething between them, Akira could hardly see what was going on with Goro. He heard Goro roar like he had in that fight before, and knew he was putting everything into this fight.

All Akira's focus narrowed down to one thing. It felt as if time slowed as he hit shadow after shadow with precision—with fire, with lightning, using every wide-range spell he had to create a path. He made calculated, split-second decisions on which hits to take, which cuts to let get halfway into him so he could buy a few extra seconds, push his way just a little closer.

“Goro!”

The enemies' numbers were decreasing enough that he could finally get a clear line of sight over to Goro.

He was no longer wearing his white prince outfit—he was in striped gray-and-blue, summoning a zebra-like persona with horns growing from its eyes, a jagged blade in one hand as he leaped on the shadows around him, tearing into them one after another.

Akira didn't even question it. What did catch his attention was the long bloody slash across his thigh, and how his movements were clearly slower, sloppier than usual. He'd been tired coming into this—he couldn't handle much more.

Akira tried to shove his way through, but was knocked down by a large, bull-like shadow. Sumire covered for him, yanking him out of the way just in time—but it lost him a few precious moments, and in that interval, he heard Goro scream.

He kept fighting, he was making progress, they'd taken out over half the enemies in the room by now, killing so many shadows that they were wading through black sludge as they fought, but it wasn't fast enough. How many seconds, how many minutes had passed since that scream?

Akira was beyond making good judgments. He dove past one birdlike foe, letting its claws scrape his side, and slid under the legs of a larger humanoid shadow, rolling to his feet and crashing into a smaller impish shadow, using it as a springboard to leap over a goat-demon and land by Goro.

Goro was hunched over, barely on his feet, his shoulders heaving and his clothing dyed red-black. When Akira landed next to him, Goro immediately spun around, wild-eyed, to attack, swiping at Akira with a clawed hand—and the moment he turned his back, the demon behind him used that opening to thrust its thick blade into Goro's back.

A burble of blood leaked out of Goro's mouth and his hands came to the blade that had sprouted from his stomach, trying to push it back out, but he didn't have the strength. He just kept straining against it in vain.

Akira didn't even remember fighting the enemies, after that. He killed that demon somehow, probably, and the next one and the next one, and he assumed Sumire was handling the rest. All that was in his mind that moment was bracing his boot against Goro's back and wrenching that massive blade out of him, the weak gurgle Goro made then instead of a scream, and rolling Goro over, taking him in his arms, tossing away his gloves, ripping into the black cloth around his torso to get his hands in close and heal him.

By that point, Goro wasn't moving anymore, just lying limp in Akira's grip, a shocking amount of blood soaking Akira's pants and pooling over the floor around them, but Akira wasn't about to give up. Just a little more, and it'd be okay.

The edges of the wounds closed, pushing out his fingers, and Akira's hands ran over his body, searching for anything he'd missed, before coming up to his head, ripping off his mask and neck guard, marking Goro's cheeks with red handprints.

“Come on, Akechi,” he muttered, hands shaking as he continued to send cool healing energy into his body. “You're stronger than this, right? I've seen you...I've fought you...” He gathered Goro into his arms, pulling him into a tight embrace, pressing his cheek against the side of Goro's face. He never stopped trying to heal him, casting until he had no more left, and then scraping the bottom of his reserves for more. He always had more. He could always give more.

“We made a deal, Akechi, you have to keep your end of the bargain...” He didn't even know what he was saying. The only thing that was real was the feeling of Goro's skin against his, his hand against Goro's chest.

He couldn't feel a heartbeat.

“Don't...don't fuck with me like this... You can't do this to me again...” Akira was scraping so deep into his reserves, his head was screaming at him and his nerves were on fire, but he kept healing Goro. “Please...I need you...I don't have anything else left...” A sob slipped out of him, and soon tears were streaking down the blood and ooze that dirtied his face. “Don't give up, you're not allowed to give up. I'm sorry I gave up on you, I never will again, I swear it, I swear it, come on, Akechi.” He shook the limp body in his grasp, as if trying to get him to wake up.

And then, in a final move of insane desperation, he grabbed Goro's face in both hands and kissed him.

His lips were still, and tasted like blood.

Akira collapsed onto him, pouring what remaining dregs of power he had into Goro's body. “Please...help him...” he muttered, praying to a vague, half-remembered figure he couldn't even be sure in the moment was real.

The chaos of the room was now still, and he heard footsteps approaching him. “Senpai, he's...”

Then Goro's body shuddered under him, and he heaved up, spewing up a mouthful of blood and black mass in a coughing fit. Akira immediately rolled him over to his side and smacked his back with shaking hands, helping him get his lungs clear. Once he was breathing properly again, Akira immediately went to examining him, running his hands over his face, neck, shoulders, torso, hips, thighs, looking for any kind of injury.

Goro seemed disoriented, pushing him away weakly, but Akira knocked his hands away roughly and continued his examination, then when he was done, grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.

Goro looked exhausted and confused, hair in a mess and covered in all sorts of nasty fluids as he stared at Akira and blinked. But he was alive. “What?”

Akira just pulled him into an embrace and sobbed.

“What are you doing?” Goro muttered, shoving at him a bit, but he was too tired to really put up a fight.

“Just shut up and let me—” Akira couldn't even finish, gripping Goro with white-knuckled hands.

Goro stayed quiet in his embrace until Akira was done, crying himself dry. Akira pushed him away, wiping his face, and then noticing Sumire there, felt suddenly embarrassed. She had to have been watching everything.

He knelt there for a moment, trying to wipe his face but just getting it more disgusting with blood and muck, until he finally sighed and looked at the other two there, and at the disaster of a room around them. The whole room was a sea of black ooze, every single piece of the set and cameras and furniture had been destroyed, and it looked like multiple explosions had gone off in here.

But the door on the other end of the room was open.

“...I guess that was enough pathos, huh,” Akira muttered, and Goro and Sumire turned around to follow his gaze.

Akira looked at Sumire and Goro in turn. Both of them were a mess, their costumes in tatters and splattered with nameless muck, but Sumire was the better off of the two, since she seemed to be able to stand, even if she was wobbly. She was dressed in coat and leotard and wearing a mask, just like the two of them.

And most of all, that outfit was familiar to Akira. As was Goro's black costume. It was all still a big jumble in his head, and he couldn't even begin to sort it out now, it was a mess of mismatched memories with lots of holes and vague areas in the middle. It would just have to wait until later. Right now, there was the matter at hand.

“...So,” Akira said after a long, awkward pause. “Can anyone explain to me just what the hell happened?”

Goro and Sumire looked at each other. They looked at Akira.

“Her fault,” Goro pointed at her with a scowl.


	16. Playing with a Full Deck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter after I whined nobody was reading ;A; it's good to know there are people looking forward to the next bit, even if they don't usually comment much. I will do my best to push on with this absolute monster of a fic. It's definitely gonna cap 100k. I desperately hope it will be no longer than 120k, but I planned this to have two parts and I'm only now starting to approach the climax of part 1, so uhhhh I need stamina. @.@

In the name of not sitting around in a pile of ooze, the three of them decided to drag themselves back to a safe room to rest and talk. Fortunately, despite the disaster that had just occurred in that studio room, the rest of the palace shadows were still not hostile, and they got there in one piece.

Akira offered Goro his shoulder, but Goro just said, “Can you even hold yourself up?” and Akira was forced to agree. Sumire looked like she wanted to help, but Goro was refusing to look at her, so in the end, Akira and Goro both hobbled off on their own while Sumire took up the rear, a watchful eye trained around them.

Once they got into the same little dressing room where Akira and Goro had eaten lunch, Akira immediately flopped down on the floor, Goro slumped into a stool by the dressing room mirror like he was collapsing in it, and Sumire sat herself down on another stool with a two seat gap in between herself and Goro.

Leaning back against some box full of nameless supplies, Akira looked up at Sumire, prompting her to talk.

She sighed. “It's not like I fully understand everything myself, but I'll do my best.” And she told them about how her existence seemed to have disappeared in the world, and everyone treated her like her sister, which she figured was connected to how she was invisible in the Metaverse, and that she'd been following them, until just now, when for some reason, she'd manifested form and appeared before them.

“For some reason?” Akira raised an eyebrow.

She fiddled with her hands in her lap. “...For a long time, I've figured...it was okay if I disappeared, nobody would notice, anyway. But this time, I thought...I can't just stand by and watch anymore. I don't want to be helpless.”

“Archetypal persona awakening,” Goro said. He was leaning his back against the dressing room counter, slumped in his stool. “So she's another one like us, huh?” He'd dumped his black helmet on the counter, and he was making a half-hearted effort to wipe his face and hair with a cloth he'd found in one of the dressing room drawers. He still kind of looked like death. He also didn't look surprised.

“You knew?” Akira pressed him. “That she was following us.”

Goro shot him a look. “So what? It's not like I could stop her.”

“You could have _stopped her,_ ” Akira muttered darkly.

Goro stared at him a moment, then laughed—the sound was closer to a wheeze. “I can't believe I'm hearing _you_ suggest that.”

“...I'm just saying you're less ruthless than you like to play it.”

That shut Goro up, and he turned away. “...It was unnecessary.”

Sumire didn't seem like she quite followed, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Anyway,” Akira brought the subject back on track, “So what, you manifested a persona, and then...?”

She rubbed her head as if she were embarrassed. “I was...really worked up, all right? My head hurt really badly, and I couldn't think straight. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing.”

“She was a total idiot and attacked the director cutout,” Goro said bluntly. “Why the hell did you think that was a good idea?”

“I couldn't just let you go onto that set!”

“Why not?” Goro turned on her, still leaning back against the counter. “It's none of your business! Why do you care?!”

“I...” She paused, hand against her chest. “...Senpai didn't want you to go, but you weren't listening to him.”

“Your senpai here was also being an idiot.”

“I wasn't...” Akira began, bare fingers tightening around his coat. He'd left his gloves in that studio. Whatever, this outfit regenerated at will anyway.

He hadn't been being an idiot—worse, he'd been losing his mind. He'd never been more terrified in his life—he'd felt unable to breathe, like he was going to die, and now, thinking back, his fear seemed completely irrational and crazy. Whatever they would have done on that set, it couldn't have been as bad as the fight they'd gone through instead, and Goro had been entirely right to go through with it.

And that was without even getting into the hallucinations. This wasn't the first time he'd heard those phantom gunshots. The first time had been when he'd encountered the Goro cognition, and then after that, he'd woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat more than once, caught in the swiftly-fading memories of vivid dreams, fully convinced Goro was going to die, but this time, he'd really lost it.

It had started with the memory of Goro's death, and went from there. Some of the memories were conflicting and didn't make any sense at all. He remembered living a perfect life where he was happy every day and surrounded by friends, and that memory was the most suspicious of all, it couldn't be real—but he also remembered living a dozen different other lives, too, some of them better than others, all of them with vague and fuzzy endpoints. He remembered fighting _someone_ or _something,_ but never exactly what. He knew there was _someone_ he should be looking for, the same _someone_ he had prayed to before to save Goro, but he couldn't remember who that was—that memory was locked away so aggressively, it made him suspicious. And most of all, this feeling of remembering, this feeling like he was trying to claw into his own memories, gave him the strongest feeling of deja-vu.

The one thing that told him he couldn't possibly be insane, though, was that something inside him had changed. After what had happened, he felt now he was capable of accessing powers he hadn't had before—or maybe powers he _had_ had before, and he knew he could summon personas more powerful than any he'd been using until now.

And each and every persona was intimately tied to a person.

Each of these people he recalled in such vivid, intimate detail, they couldn't possibly be figments of his imagination. Even if the events he remembered were vague and piecemeal, those connections felt entirely real to him—more real than his life now could ever be. Goro and Sumire were two of those people. But he needed all of them, every single one, to feel right. He knew with more certainty than anything else _that_ was where he belonged.

He remembered Morgana. Ryuji. And Ann. And Yusuke, and Makoto, Futaba, Haru—and Sojiro and and Dr. Takemi and Mishima and Miss Kawakami and Hifumi and Chihaya and Sae Nijima and Shinya, and he'd been properly close with Yoshida and Ohya and Iwai before, and then there had been—there had been— _Strength—_ who? _The Fool—_ who? And—who?

_The C—_

Akira pressed his throbbing forehead with the heel of his palm. This was way too much to deal with right now. He just had to focus on getting out of this palace. He sighed. “Okay, so how did you know about all this, Goro?”

Goro's eyelids twitched, his gaze off to the side. Sumire was looking at him, too—did she even know how he knew?

After taking a moment to consider, though, Goro answered, “I went back to that strange 'nobody' distortion we ran into before. I believe Yoshizawa here was the master of that distortion.”

From the look of surprise on Sumire's face, this was new information to her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Oh, ask him,” Goro said with a dismissive eyeroll, gesturing over to Akira, and Sumire's gaze slid over to him with growing suspicion.

“What makes you think it was hers? The Nav said _nobody_.”

“Well, this is just a hypothesis,” Goro leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “But it would fit everything. I went back there later alone and questioned my own cognition there, and happened to discover him saying _Sumire Yoshizawa doesn't exist._ Asking around within the distortion at locations such as the training gym she told us about, I found everyone saying the same thing: Sumire Yoshizawa doesn't exist. It's a rather strange way to word it, isn't it? Just the act of saying it acknowledges her existence. And then the whole distortion is filled with this eerie wind that seems to talk.” He gave Sumire a sharp look. “The same wind that was following us everywhere through the Metaverse.”

“Everywhere?” Akira gave Sumire an examining look. It was true that he'd had this weird sense that someone was watching him many times, but he'd always assumed that was just the nature of the collective unconscious.

Sumire blushed and looked away. “...Yes.”

“So you've seen everything.” Akira didn't have to think back more than a couple hours to reach material that would be...sensitive to have seen. But even the nature of the material aside, what was getting under his skin was simply that what he had thought of as just for him and Goro had not been. This had been their own private world free of reality or anything else—and now an intruder had stepped in without his knowledge. “Why? Why do that?”

“Revenge, obviously,” Goro cut in. His eyes slid to the side. “Isn't that right? Against the one who got your sister killed. You were looking for blackmail information.”

Akira was immediately tense, though he maintained the appearance of relaxation, leaning back against the box on the floor.

“No!” She shook her head fiercely. “I just—I just thought you could help me, I thought your powers might have something to do with how everyone was treating me like Kasumi.”

“So then why didn't you ask for help?” Akira asked, tone low. “I would have helped you.”

“I—” Her eyes flicked between Goro and Akira, both of whom were eyeing her with wary looks. “I did! I did try! But you were too busy—” she made a frustrated gesture—“doing things—”

“Things,” Akira repeated.

She hopped off the stool and turned away from the both of them, gathering herself, before spinning back to face them again. “What gives you the right to cross-examine me for a bit of snooping?! It wouldn't be a big deal if you didn't have anything to feel guilty about!”

Everything inside Akira instantly went cold. He slowly pushed himself to his feet, taking a step toward Sumire, and asked her with absolute calm, “What, exactly, would I have to feel guilty about?”

She froze, looking up at him like a rat caught in a trap.

“Nothing? All right then.” Akira turned away from her, pulling the bag of holding out from his pocket to shuffle through its contents. “Let's focus on getting out of this distortion. Everything else can wait until later.”

Sumire reluctantly agreed, and the discussion ended there.

x x x

They rested a while, and with the consumption of a few of Goro's various remedies and drugs, got themselves cleaned up pepped up enough to continue onward. It was clear Sumire was tired, though, and Goro was fully running on empty. Akira—he felt strange, like he was discovering reserves he didn't know he had, and he wasn't sure where the bottom was. Wasn't sure what he'd had to go through to get this. Wasn't sure if it was best to reveal he had this.

After continuing on through the doorway they'd opened further into the palace, they reached what seemed to be an executive level for CEOs and big-name stars. It was full of fancy lounges and bars, with celebrities and men in suits drinking, feeling up hired girls and doing various illicit drugs. All these rooms full of debauchery were still populated with clown cutouts and dolled up in the carnival aesthetic—even this, it seemed, was all a part of the show.

The three of them remained in uncomfortable silence throughout. Until the big fight in the studio, Akira had been in a pretty good mood. Even after their entrance through the auditions hall, when he'd been forced to watch Akira such that demon's cock—that had been upsetting on the one hand, but it was within the range of things he could accept from Goro. He could come to terms with that. Sumire's presence here didn't only change the present moment, it colored every moment he'd had in the Metaverse so far.

He knew it wasn't fair to resent her for it, it wasn't really even about her. It was just the fact of having _anyone_ watch him, having an outside observer here. When it was just him and Goro, he didn't have to think about anything else. Even though now, especially, he knew, he _knew—_

There was literally no point in thinking about it.

Eventually, they reached the top of the whole studio labyrinth, pausing in front of a door that read, _The Greatest Showman._

“This looks like it,” Akira pointed to the sign. “Are you guys ready?”

“Do we have to go through with this?” Sumire said, clearly anxious. “There might be another way out.”

“You saw the entrance as well as we did,” Goro pointed out. “This distortion is tightly locked down.”

“But you didn't really look,” Sumire shook her head. “If we just took some time—”

“None of us have the energy for that,” Goro said, and his clear exhaustion gave his statement weight. “What if we run into some other trap here, and then we can't find an exit? We either fight this master now, or we may never get out.”

“You don't even know how strong this shadow is—”

But Goro completely ignored Sumire and pushed open the door ahead of them.

The door opened to a wide, luxurious room with a glass floor. You could look down below and see everything they had passed through to get there—and sitting there behind a mahogany desk with a glass of whisky was a man dressed like a dapper carnival barker. His outfit was red-and-white striped with a top hat, cane, goatee, and white spats on his spit-shined shoes.

“Oh, it's you,” the man said, waving them in as if they'd been invited. “I've been loving the show, honestly. Nice work.” Taking a sip of his whisky, he threw his feet up on top of his desk, leaning back in his chair. “I'd put it on TV, but you have to drop the gay shit, that doesn't sell, well, unless it's in the tabloids. You two—” he pointed to Sumire and Goro, “should be the main couple, while black coat guy can be the dark horse in the love triangle. That'll make it a real hit.”

Akira looked over to see Goro snort and Sumire blush.

“Not interested,” Akira said.

“Come on, don't lie to me. Everyone wants to be a star. You,” he pointed over at Goro, “what's your name again? Goro Akechi. I knew the moment I saw you out there,” the way he gestured, Akira got the impression he meant _in the real world,_ “you're the type who drinks the limelight like air. You crave the attention. You're not gonna blow a good chance.”

“Forget it,” Goro pointed his gun at the showman, but the man was completely unfazed.

“Nice gun ya got there, oh, an old Featherman model, isn't it? You want a role in the new _Featherman_ season? I can see you've got the material, and your popularity right now'll dovetail in with it nicely. We've got some great stuff coming, you know, the writer's room is great, it's gonna make so much money. And the tagline is: _hero becomes villain, villain becomes hero!_ The hype is building. And I have the perfect role in it for you.”

Goro fired at him, but the showman's head blurred a second as the bullet passed it, and he continued talking as if nothing had happened. “You've got the good looks, the charisma, and most of all, you've got...” he swung his legs down off his desk to leak forward, “that hunger. All the biggest stars have it. That desire for more. It's never satisfied. You want, _need_ everyone to love you, and that's why you're here. You know _this world—”_ the man spread his arms, and Akira wasn't sure if he meant the Metaverse, or showbusiness, or if it even mattered—“is the only place you'll get what you want. So you come to me. And you'll put on a show, lie, and pretend, and humiliate yourself however you have to to get the temporary satisfaction it gives you.” A wide grin spread on the man's face.

Goro fired at him twice, three more times, but each time, his face blurred, and the bullet passed through. Goro clicked his tongue.

“Looks like we need to try something else,” Akira said, going into a fighting stance, hand rising to his mask as he scanned the room. The setting around them was barren. Maybe this wasn't the real shadow, but just some kind of projection.

Sumire hung back, her posture still anxious and uncertain. Akira knew he could count on her if push came to shove, but it didn't seem like she wanted to be here.

The showman stood from his desk, waving a finger with a _tsk tsk tsk._ “You're gonna be stubborn? Turning down an offer this great from _me?_ You don't know how to be grateful. Guess I might have to twist your arms a bit, here.” He raised the fancy cane in one hand, and spun it around. “I'll just have to get this show started myself!” He flung his cane into the air and clapped his hands, and the room went dark.

x x x

Akira came to on a dark set as a spotlight shone down over his head. He was on stage, surrounded by a bunch of cardboard cutouts—he had something on his head, and couldn't get it off. Looking down at himself through his restricted vision, he found he was wearing some kind of red sentai suit, and the clown cutouts around him were all in sentai style.

“Red Hawk, leader of the Phoenix Ranger Feathermen! Strong, capable, reliable, always ready to lend a helping hand to those in need! A classic hero, the kind that's popular in any era!” Akira heard the showman's voice coming through over some kind of loudspeaker.

Akira cast about the set, looking for an exit, but it was too dark to see. It was just him and the blazing-hot lights and the cutouts. He patted his pockets, searching for a knife or his bag of holding, but it had gone somewhere along with his regular costume. He heard the sound effects of an audience cheering over the loudspeaker.

“The villains he defeats are evil, which makes him good! We say he's the hero, so he's the hero! That's how Sunday morning programming works—don't want to make anything too complicated for those kiddos at home! Though in the real world, there's no such thing as villains or heroes, only people with power and people who ain't got it! Isn't that right!”

“...How very Nietzsche,” Akira muttered to himself, fingers running around his neck, trying to find a spot where he could pry this helmet off.

“And Red Hawk has the only power that matters: numbers!” the voice continued, and the lights panned down over the crowd of sentai clown cutouts standing around him. “The more people you got supporting ya, the more right you are! That's what makes me CEO of this company, and that's what makes you the leader of the Feathermen, and don't you forget that! But then, what if...” the showman trailed off in a melodramatic, ominous tone, “We start taking 'em away?”

And then one cardboard cutout popped out of existence, the spotlight going out with it. And then one more, and one more, and one more, until there was just Akira standing there alone.

“Well, you're not a leader of a band of heroes anymore, you're just a lone vigilante, now! Who are you, without their support? A CEO without a company is just a homeless drunk! And then toss a coat of black paint on you...” There was a sloshing sound, and Akira jerked away as he was splattered with black ooze coming out of nowhere, dying his costume black. “And there ya go, bona-fide villain! That's all a villain is, after all—a poor soul outcast from the tribe!”

The spotlights shone down on the other side of the stage now, on a circle of cutouts with two more _Featherman_ characters standing in their center—a girl in red and a boy in silver.

“Senpai?!” Akira heard the girl in red cry out—it was Sumire's voice.

“Akira?” The silver figure called—it was Goro.

“Guys,” Akira replied, turning toward the other two.

“Villains turn good by making friends with them, that's the oldest cliche in the book!” the showman called. “Everyone loves a villain redeemed! A heartwarming tale of acceptance and love!” There was a sound effect of an audience going _aww._ “Otaku eat up that sort of story, y'know, because they're all sad lonely fucks with no friends, and they love to project. But that's great, because then they spend all their money on our licensed merchandise! Buy the hot new Gray Pigeon figure today, limited edition!” he said in an eerily chipper tone. “Our poor, sad, misunderstood villain! If he'd only had friends to give him a hug, he wouldn't have done all that bad stuff! Or maybe—if he only had friends, whatever he did wouldn't be bad!”

“That's some pretty eighth-grade moral relativism you've got there,” Goro said dryly as he walked across the stage toward Akira. “There's a door that goes backstage, but it's locked tight. And with these damn helmets on,” he knocked his own silver helmet, “we can't summon our personas.”

“It's fine, I've got an idea,” Akira said with a nod, and he walked over to the side of the stage, placed his hands against the square pillar of the proscenium arch, leaned back, and bashed his head against the corner of the pillar.

He heard a couple of yelps, but the mask was crunched open, and Akira managed to rip off the shattered pieces of the mask—and when he got it off, he found he could tear the thing off in strips, and his thief outfit reappeared fresh underneath it. A few more rips, and he was kicking off the remainder of the red cloth.

“Hey, what are you doing?!” he heard the the showman's voice yelling. “Those costumes aren't cheap to make, you know!”

Akira looked over at Goro and Sumire.

“Want me to help you with yours?” he offered, reaching out a hand, and the both of them flinched.

“I can bash my own head into a wall, though sorry to deprive you of the pleasure,” Goro said, and then he copied Akira, and Sumire, after a moment of hesitation, did the same—and none too soon, as all the cardboard cutouts onstage were now morphing into shadows as the voice over the loudspeaker raged at them.

“You think you can fuck up _my_ dress rehearsal? You're fired! Absolutely fucking fired, get out!!”

“I never wanted the damn job anyway!” Goro snapped, and the three of them got ready to fight.

Fortunately, these shadows were nothing much, and they cleaned them up fairly quickly. When they were done, Akira suggested, “We could try lockpicking that door backstage,” but then he saw Sumire looked like she wanted to say something. “Unless you have a better idea,” he nodded at her.

“O-oh, I was just thinking,” she pointed upward toward the catwalk up where the lights were rigged. “Maybe we can get out that way.”

“Nice idea. Lead the way,” Akira said, and Sumire nodded back at him, clambering up the set to jump up toward the lights.

“Who the hell put you in charge,” Goro grumbled as Akira went off after her, but he didn't oppose this course of action.

Sumire wasn't as strong a fighter as the two of them, but her acrobatics left the two of them in the dust, vaulting across the ceiling lights to get to the other side, her leaps covering a wide distance that the two of them couldn't reach. “I'll see if I can circle around and open up that door from the other side!” she called from the other side of the theater. “Wait there, okay?” and then she disappeared into a vent, leaving Goro and Akira stuck up on the lighting catwalk together.

“Guess we have to wait for her,” Akira said, then sat himself down on the catwalk, looking down on the stage. The showman's narration continued, after a certain amount of ranting and complaining about the cast skipping out, and the three of them had been replaced with some cutouts. The show must go on, apparently.

Goro didn't sit, though, looking down at Akira. “You trust her that much?”

Akira looked up at him. It would be difficult to explain now how and why he trusted Sumire. All that would have to wait until they were out of here. He just said, “Yeah.”

Goro snorted. Then he sat down beside Akira, looking down at the stage, watching in silence for a while as the group of Feathermen with the red leader as cutout “battled” very still-ly with sound effects against the figure in black, who was laughing maniacally.

“And here I was, looking forward to the new season of _Featherman R,_ ” Goro said after a while. “I somehow don't think I'll be able to enjoy it now.”

“Come on,” Akira cracked a grin, looking over at him. “Don't let this guy ruin it for you! We should watch it together. You clearly love that tokusatsu stuff,” he jerked his chin at Goro's black mask get-up.

Akira caught a hint of Goro blushing behind his mask. “Yeah, so what?!”

“Why did you want to hide it that badly, anyway?” Akira asked. He had this vague, niggling feeling that he knew what it was, but the memories were just out of his grasp.

Goro turned away, and didn't answer, and Akira knew the answer to this question was important. And knowing that, even after all their time together, even after all Akira had done for him, Goro still wouldn't tell him, made him want to snap, but he didn't.

“Goro—” he began, but then he heard the sound of a thump and a door opening, and Goro stood up.

“Sounds like your trust wasn't misplaced, _with her_ ,” Goro said, striding off down the catwalk. “Lucky this time.”

Akira glared at his back, bitterness welling in his stomach.

x x x

Going out through the dressing room door, they made their way through a lengthy backstage-looking area before coming out into the audience seats of the “big top” area they'd passed before, with a ring stage in the middle. The ceiling was high, and filled with crowds of large, multicolored balloons.

“So now what?” Akira wondered aloud, bringing a hand to his chin as he looked over at the show in the ring stage—this one was a scene from a movie that was popular right now, a dramatic action sequence.

“If we go up to his room again, the same thing is bound to happen,” Goro said with a sigh.

“Why don't we search for another way out?” Sumire pressed, but she was outnumbered.

Staring at the stage, a thought hit Akira. “He seemed pretty keen for the show to go on before, when he had us play,” he said. “What do you think would happen if we interrupted his big hit?”

“...I think we'd get killed, that's what I think,” Goro said, but Akira was already striding down the stairs, along the aisles of the audience seating, towards the ring stage. “Wait, what are you doing?” He took a step after Akira, but Akira broke into a run.

He knew there had been a time when he would have made decisions like this in careful conference with his friends, taking everyone's view into account. But those people weren't here, and frankly, _fuck_ Goro for leading him around by the nose all this time while he was clearly hiding his secret agenda. Akira was sick of following his lead. And Sumire—this mission wasn't her business, she should never have followed them in here. It wasn't as if either of them even trusted him, anyway. There was nobody who trusted in him, anymore, and he wasn't even sure he could make them all remember or what had been done to them _(or even if they were still alive)_. He would try, god damn he would try, but _what if—_

He wasn't going to think about that.

Flying down the steps five at a time, a grin grew on Akira's lips. Even now that just about everything meaningful had been stripped away from him, he still had this. Ignoring Goro and Sumire's cries behind them, he crashed onto the stage, rolling right into the middle, knocking down several cutouts on the way. With a dramatic sweep of his coat, he spun around to face the audience. The bright lights kept him from seeing anything, but he knew eyes were watching, and this audience, if no one else, would know him.

“The leader of the Phantom Thieves has arrived!” he cried out, spreading his arms wide. “And I've come to steal your show!”


	17. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went back to chapter 8 to add more foreshadowing... just a couple more lines about the velvet room. Agh foreshadowing is hard.

“The leader of the Phantom Thieves has arrived!” he cried out, spreading his arms wide. “And I've come to steal your show!”

There was a rumbling, the stage beneath him shuddered, and the giant balloons that hung in the air near the ceiling of the big top slowly rotated and shifted around, coalescing into a giant, sinister clown face with a pair of white-gloved hands. “Get off _my_ stage, intruder. You're ruining the show.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Akira saw Goro and Sumire running down the aisle toward the ring stage—Goro was yelling something, but the rumbling around him was drowning it out.

Looking up at the balloon clown with a grin, Akira raised one gloved hand and made a taunting gesture, beckoning to it. “Make me.”

When the balloon fist slammed down, Akira was already in the air, cartwheeling to the other side of the stage as downstage right was completely crushed under the giant fist. A second punch followed, and a third, and each time Akira danced away, covering the whole stage until the giant fist had entirely destroyed the whole ring as well as all the cutouts on it, before he leaped away and ran into the audience seats, on the opposite side from Sumire and Goro, who were at this point just kind of standing there in shock.

The cutouts in the audience were transforming into shadows one after another, but Akira ignored them all, racing past them as the giant hands slammed down behind him like an angry pianist failing at Chopin, or slaps pursuing a particularly obnoxious mosquito. The giant clown hands were careless and wild in their destruction, crushing the shadows and seats all together in their attempt to chase down Akira, flattening the audience seats, then ripping up the floorboards to toss the wooden fragments at him, which he smoothly ducked and dodged as he hopped from seat to seat, occasionally jumping on top of shadows to use their faces as springboards.

“I'll blacklist you forever! Nobody will work with you! You'll never be famous! I'll crush your dreams!” The clown howled as it continued to pursue Akira all around the big top, but he just kept running and dodging, making no attempt to retaliate.

Before long, he'd done a full circle of the big top, leaving a trail of crushed shadows turned to black ooze and wreckage in his wake. The stage had been destroyed, most of the audience had been flattened. When Akira arrived at the stage again, the clown roared, shaking the whole big top. “How _dare_ you ruin my show! I'll destroy you!”

“I think you're the one who ruined this show,” Akira pointed out, lowering himself into a fighting stance as pillars of flame burst out at the corners of the destroyed stage around him.

The balloon clown's eyes rolled back in its head as it screamed, and when it opened its mouth, revealing a gaping maw of sharp fangs, Akira felt positively giddy.

“I actually get to fight Pennywise? For real?” This was giving him such a shot of adrenaline, he could feel himself getting hard. When was the last time he'd had a fight like this? Of course it was always fun to fight Goro, but he they were both holding back, and there was no real threat to his life. He'd missed this. He'd missed it a lot.

“You've ruined my show, intruder...!” The clown's hands sprouted claws, and it seemed to inflate in size, the ruff around its neck bursting into flame. “So _you'll_ give me a show instead! Show me your anger, your desperation, your _fear!_ ”

“Fear? Oh, that's so on theme, I love it.” Akira raised a hand to his mask as the clown's claws swooped down on him. Too bad for Pennywise, Akira was never afraid during a fight.

They fought; an exhilarating dance around the ruined stage as Akira summoned a wide array of personas to strike at the giant clown. Nothing else existed around him during the fight, it was just him and the enemy playing a game with the highest stakes of all. He entirely forgot about Sumire and Goro for a little while, until he heard a yell—and looked over to see Sumire standing by the walkway that lead from the ring out to the backstage area, pointing to a curtained-off staff-only area.

The giant clown howled, and Akira turned back to it to avoid a swipe from one of its giant hands as a ball of flame shot past him to ignite even more of the burning arena seats, then looked back to see Goro dragging a figure out from behind that curtained-off area. It looked like a middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit, flailing and crying in Goro's grip, and Akira's eyes shifted over to see the giant clown flailing and crying in the same way, before suddenly disappearing in a puff of smoke.

It was very anticlimactic, after the fight they'd been having, and Akira felt rather like he'd just been cockblocked. With a sigh, he adjusted himself in his pants, then walked over to where Sumire and Goro were.

“The man behind the curtain,” Goro said as he tossed the pinstripe suit man down on the dirt walkway in front of him. “Looks like he was controlling that giant clown.”

Akira looked down at the man on his knees. His hands were tied behind his back, and there was another rope around his thighs—he wasn't going anywhere. He looked like the carnival barker they'd seen in the CEO's room, but rather older, plainer, and fatter.

“So you're the master of this distortion, huh?” Akira said. Underwhelming.

“What do you want? Is it money? You want to be on TV? I can do that,” the shadow blubbered, and Goro drew his gun.

“They're all like this, aren't they?” he said as if he was bored, flicking off the safety.

But before he could shoot, Sumire stepped between him and the shadow, arms spread. “Wait.”

Goro drew his gun back, pointing it up at the ceiling. “What?”

“You don't have to do this,” she said, her expression one of utter earnestness.

“If you want to get out of this distortion, yes, I do,” Goro replied. “Now get out of the way.”

“I can let you out!” the shadow blubbered. “I'll open the door for you!”

“See?” Sumire flung one hand back, gesturing toward the man. “Haven't you ever just tried to talk to a shadow?”

“This isn't your business,” Goro spat at her. “You followed us in here to spy on us, and now you want to tell me what to do? Get lost.”

“Senpai!” Sumire turned to Akira. “Say something, please!”

“...Like what?” Akira said, a growing sense of unease and irritation building inside him. “This is what we came here to do.”

“And you're okay with it?” she flung her arms wide as emphasis. “I know you're not this kind of person!”

“And what the _fuck_ kind of person do you think he is, huh?” Goro leaned in toward her, teeth bared menacingly. Her expression wavered, but she didn't budge from her position. “You want him to be the handsome prince who swoops in and saves you and loves you forever? Newsflash: that kind of person doesn't exist.”

“...” Sumire's lips trembled, but she held firm, eyes locked on Goro's. “...You sound really sad about that.”

Goro's eyes flashed, and he drew one clawed hand back as if to strike, but Akira caught him by the wrist before he could do anything.

“Let me the fuck go,” Goro snarled, wrenching out of Akira's grasp, and Akira let him go easily. “You don't know anything about me, and you don't know anything about him. Just get the fuck out of my way, or I'll get rid of you myself.”

“Goro...” Akira put a hand on his shoulder, meaning to restrain him, but Goro shook him off. “Just calm down. She's not our enemy.”

“She's not _my_ friend,” Goro spun around back to him to spit. “And who's side are you on here, anyway?”

“I'm not on anyone's _side—_ ”

“Senpai,” Sumire said firmly, taking a step toward him. “You can talk some sense into him. Tell him he doesn't have to kill people.”

Akira shook his head. “So then what would you have us do about this guy? You've seen his distortion. He's not a good person.”

“That doesn't mean he deserves to _die._ Or that you have the right to be the judge!”

“And why not?!” Goro turned on her. “We have the power to deal justice to these people, why shouldn't we?”

“A-are you going to quote Jung at me, now? _The revelation of the self is the God within!_ ” she said, about as sarcastic as Akira had ever seen her, and it was kind of shocking. “So that means you can do whatever you want—because you have some kind of divine mandate?!” she took a step toward him. “We both know you don't even believe that!”

“You shut up,” Goro hissed at her.

“If we just let him continue doing as he does, how many people would suffer for it?” Akira pointed out. “Our inaction would be a choice, too.”

“There are so many other things you could do besides _this!_ ” Sumire flung an arm out again, visibly frustrated.

“Like what,” Akira stuck his hands in his pockets, chin angled up to look down on her. “Like use the Metaverse to manipulate his psychology, alter his sense of identity, and turn him into a _“good”_ person? Maybe manipulate his memories while we're at it?” Akira didn't realize how angry he was until those words were already out of his mouth, but now that it was said, the very idea made him sick. He knew he'd done this, once upon a time, and he'd felt righteous and heroic about it, too. He'd been such a fucking ignorant child, then. Now, he knew he would rather die than have someone get into his head and alter who he was.

“I...” Sumire seemed stunned, like she didn't even know how to react to the suggestion.

“And this isn't your business. This is between me and Goro,” Akira finished off, tone clipped.

Sumire was struck speechless for a while before she seemed to gather herself and yelled back, “You're just mad because I ruined your fun! You wanted to—to fight _P-Pennywise_ so bad, you act like you don't care! But I know you feel guilty!”

Akira felt like one of those pillars of fire from earlier was blazing up his throat. He clenched and unclenched his hands, feeling the leather of his gloves, forcibly relaxed his stance. He couldn't think up anything to reply.

“Is it that fun, running away from reality?!” she cried, and when she was bold and assertive like this, she looked so much like her sister.

“Running away from reality...?” A chuckle bubbled up from Akira's chest. “Aha. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” He couldn't stop laughing. It was just so ironic. He would absolutely love to run _to_ reality. And what was reality anymore? Fighting that clown had sure felt more fucking real than the rest of his life in this world.

She backed away from him, confused by his reaction, but he stepped forward, caught her by the side of her face, and tipped up her mask so he could get a good look at her. “I never thought I would hear that from you, of all people. Trust in me. I'm not mad at you. I'm here for you, no matter what else is going on. And I am looking reality _right. In. The. Face._ ” And then he let his hand fall, but he continued to maintain eye contact until she turned away with a blush.

He had so much more to feel guilty about than she realized. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was deeply certain that everything about their situation was his fault. He'd blown it. And now they were all paying the price. That was so much more than—than a few fucking bad guys getting shot in the head. So why couldn't he have his fun? If he couldn't get this big dilapidated house repaired, at least he could take out the trash.

But fine. Whatever. It wasn't like whether this particular man lived or died was anything to him. “All right, you want this guy to live so badly? Fine, we'll wrangle something else. We don't have to kill him.”

“Senpai...” Sumire's shoulders dropped in relief.

But then Goro raised his gun at the shadow again, cutting off their exchange.

“Don't!” Sumire jumped in front of him, and this time, Goro didn't draw his gun back.

“Move.”

“ _No!_ ” She stomped her foot. “Do I have to tell him everything? Because I will.”

“Don't you _dare,_ ” Goro hissed, stepping forward to press his gun right to her forehead, but Akira came up behind him to grab his shoulder, yanking his gun arm away to point harmlessly to the side.

“You're not going to hurt her,” Akira said firmly, and when Goro struggled against him, this time, he held fast. “Stop it, Goro.”

“Of course you're on _her_ side,” Goro said bitterly, and he elbowed Akira behind him in the gut. Surprised, Akira released his arm, and Goro jumped away from the both of them.

“Senpai,” Sumire turned to him, her tone urgent, “He's been lying to you—about everything. I saw him on the phone with—”

“Shut up shut up shut _up!_ ” Goro yelled, his eyes flared wide, shoulders heaving as he pointed his gun at Sumire. “Tell him and I'll kill you!”

“Goro! Don't,” Akira said, stepping in front of her as a tinge of threat entered his voice. He wasn't about to let Goro hurt Sumire, for whatever crazy reason he was doing this.

But then Goro's gun swivelled over to point at him, instead. “I should have known you would side with _her._ Well, it's not like there was anything holding us together, was there? Just a deal you had no intention of honoring.”

“There's no _sides,_ just listen—”

“Shut _up!_ Why the hell should I listen to anything you say?!” Goro's tone was wild and close to screaming, his tense and battle-ready stance not much different from when he'd been wreathed in that black ooze as he fought shadows. He looked like he was bracing for an attack, fight-or-flight mode, about a million miles away from reason. “I knew this was going to happen eventually! Why not just fuck off earlier and save me the trouble, huh? Why'd you have to make me believe it was anything else? It was just _fun_ for you, wasn't it, fucking with me just to see what I'd do? I hope this was _worth_ it to you for the sake of playing prince for your girlfriend.”

Akira noticed Goro was shaking, then, with exhaustion, or maybe something else. He knew nothing he said would reach him, and this feeling was so sickeningly familiar. He dashed out towards Goro, but Goro's gun was already rising up—

And then Goro pointed at the shadow, fired, and the shadow collapsed on the dirt ground.

“Our deal is over,” Goro said, and he turned around and ran.

The whole distortion shuddered around them, and Akira could tell it would collapse, but he wasn't paying attention to anything but Goro's back, chasing after him as he ran out from the big top through the backstage area, winding through rocking hallways full of collapsing cutouts. He heard Sumire calling behind him, but he wasn't listening. He just had to reach Goro.

“Goro!!” he yelled, but Goro wasn't responding, nothing more than a fluttering black cape ahead of him. Goro's legs were longer, and he was slowly gaining a lead, pulling away from Akira.

Akira could hear crashing behind him as the distortion collapsed. He had faith that Sumire could get out on her own—she was fast and agile, she'd be okay. His heart was in his throat, and he was afraid in a way he'd never felt when he'd been fighting that clown.

“Goro!!” he yelled again, even knowing it was useless. Goro disappeared around a corner, and the palace came down around them.

x x x

Akira must have blacked out a moment, as when he came to, he was crouching on the sidewalk in downtown Tokyo, Sumire shaking his shoulder.

“Goro,” he muttered, stumbling forward, scanning all around in a panic. “Where is he?!”

“Senpai, look!”

Looking where Sumire pointed, Akira saw a figure in a school uniform and briefcase lying face-down on the sidewalk. People were walking around him, and some were giving him worried looks, but nobody gave him a hand.

“Goro!” Akira cried, abandoning his duffel bag on the spot and stumbling across the street toward him, heedlessly cutting through traffic and ignoring the honks behind him. He dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and felt for Goro's pulse on his neck—it was there, his skin was warm, he was breathing, but his complexion was pale. Akira remembered how his whole body had been shaking before, when he'd been holding the gun—now he realized that had probably been exhaustion. And then he'd pushed himself to run that fast to get away from him. It was no wonder he'd passed out.

Hooking his arms underneath Goro's neck and knees, Akira heaved him off the sidewalk—he was actually surprisingly heavy. Akira wouldn't be able to carry him far. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he was starting to shake and go weak, too. When Sumire came rushing up with the duffel bag, he asked her to call a taxi, and she nodded and brought out her phone.

Akira looked down at Goro's face. In sleep, at least, he was peaceful.

x x x

Goro awoke in a blue prison.

This place felt terribly familiar, and yet also incredibly foreign. Approaching the bars, he saw there was an abandoned desk in the middle of the circular room—when he touched the bars, the cell door creaked open, and he stepped out of his cell.

Looking around the room, he saw there was another empty cell on the far end, its door open, while to his right was a third cell that was strangely clouded, and he couldn't see inside.

He approached the desk in the middle of the room and saw it was scattered with cards. He picked some up, flipped them over. They all looked familiar. He'd seen Akira use these before. He picked one up— _Metatron—_ and it felt warm in his hands, but that was all. He dropped it on the table and went out the door of the prison.

He wandered through stone halls filled with cells, not going anywhere in particular. All the cells were clouded, and he couldn't see inside. He had the vague sense that he had to get out, that he was trapped and he had to get out, but he didn't know who his jailer was or who he should be fighting. All that remained was a nameless unease.

At the bottom of the prison, he pushed the door that seemed like it might go outside, and he emerged into a wide open space, like a convention center lobby or a large ballroom hall or something.

When he stepped through the door, his clothing transformed from striped prison rags to his school uniform, and the door closed behind him with a heavy thud.

He was in a great hall with winding archways and pathways, and it was filled with all sorts of strange decorations and statues. They all seemed vaguely familiar—some were grotesque replications of shadows, while others looked like personas. The faint sound of smooth jazz played in the background. _He knew this song._

“You finally responded to my invitation. I thought you'd never come.”

Goro spun around to see Akira—no, it was a shadow. His eyes were yellow, and he was wearing these rather dopey-looking fake glasses with the uniform of a school Goro didn't recognize.

“What is this place?” Goro asked him, immediately tensing.

“It's safe here, don't worry,” said the shadow, hands in his pockets and posture casual. “This is my space. I like to call it my palace.”

Not a word Goro recognized, but something about the atmosphere here was familiar to him. “This is a cognitive distortion.”

“Not quite the same thing,” said the shadow Akira. “Though if you want to call it _my perception of reality_ or _my desires made manifest,_ then it's not quite wrong. But it's not like the distortions you've been in before. Consider it a place to relax.” He adjusted his glasses with a finger. “Though I doubt you'd be into that.”

He was irritatingly right. “What do you mean, _invited me?_ And what do you want?”

The shadow quirked a smile. “I like it when you get to the point. Come follow me, and I'll tell you.” And he turned around and started walking, forcing Goro to follow.

They went over an archway decorated with a statue of a lascivious-looking shadow with a giant tongue, and a couple yellow-eyed figures were standing there, chatting. They called out and waved to the shadow Akira as he went by, and Akira raised a hand and smiled in reply. The two of them walked through all sorts of rooms filled with various settings, from ramen shops to that darts bar Goro occasionally went to, and everywhere there were people hanging out, all of them offering Akira a friendly greeting when he walked past.

“By _invited you,_ well, I mean, the me _out there_ is trying to get close to you, isn't he?” the shadow Akira said.

Goro had a hard time answering that. “...I don't know.”

Akira turned around and leveled a dry look at him. “Of course you don't.” Then he turned around and kept walking. “What I want is...total freedom. For all of us. Starting with you. I think you'll want the same.” Akira pushed his way through a large set of double doors, and it opened into what looked like the otherworldly train station. When he crossed the threshold into the train station, his outfit transformed into Joker's, and when Goro followed, he became Black Mask.

“This isn't the real Mementos. Just another part of my palace.” Akira turned around to face Goro, his coat fluttering. And then he grabbed the fingertip of one of his red gloves, plucked it off, and tossed it at Goro's chest.

Goro's hand snapped up to catch the glove, and he looked at it. “What?”

Akira gave him the most piercing look with those yellow eyes of his, and Goro couldn't help but get the impression he was in pain. “There's a tradition in the west of throwing down a glove when challenging someone to a duel.”

Looking down at the glove in his grasp, Goro felt quite strange, but he couldn't pin down exactly what this feeling was. “You're challenging me to a duel? We fight all the time, though.”

“No.” Akira shook his head. “This one is different. I want the one we _promised._ You and me, no holds barred. We can do that, here, with no consequences.”

“You called me into this weird distortion of yours to _duel?_ Are you serious? Is this real, or am I just dreaming?” Immediately after saying that, Goro realized it was a stupid thing to ask a dream character. Was he even going to get a straight answer?

“It's a dream, but it's real,” the shadow said cryptically. “I doubt you'll fully remember it when you wake up. I just hope it'll trigger something in you. This.” He jerked his chin toward the glove in Goro's hands. “It means a lot to me. And it's not just me, is it?” He didn't sound so cocky when he said that, though—there was open anxiety in his expression, the sort the real Akira would never show in the waking world.

Goro looked down at the glove. It made him feel—something. But that was all. “I can't say this is _triggering_ anything in me, no,” he said, looking up at the shadow.

The shadow's expression crumbled into something approaching despair. “Should I—I thought maybe we should play chess, but we've done that every time. Or go to the jazz bar, but—I played that music for you in the hall, though, it doesn't...?” Seeing that confused look on Goro's face, the shadow shook his head. “I thought, what was the most meaningful thing between us, and this was it. This was _it._ ” The shadow seemed frustrated, kicking at the air away from Goro as he stuck his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at the roof. Then he spun around to look at Goro again, his expression a little bit wild, a mad grin growing on his face.

“All right, then this really is what it has to be, right? You and me, right now.” His hand flicked, and a dagger appeared in it, spinning over his fingers. “Just give it to me, I need you to try to kill me for real,” he said, and he looked positively _excited_ by the idea.

“Why the hell do you want me to do that?” Goro snapped at him, backing up a step. Thinking about it now, there was no guarantee that this was actually Akira's shadow—it could be some kind of weird cognitive trap. Or hell, it could all just be a fucked-up dream.

“I need you to remember, and this is the only way,” Akira said, but then he paused, seemed to consider, and shook his head. Then he looked at Goro with a wide grin. “Actually, who am I kidding, I just want to fight. I'm getting hard just thinking about it,” he said, running a hand down to his belt, and Goro saw his erection straining against his pants underneath. “You're into it too, right? I mean, not just a little fucking around. Really _letting go_.”

“I...” Goro reflexively started to deny it, but what was the point of denying it here? He knew full well what kind of person he was.

But this was getting off-track. He had to figure out what was actually going on, here. “Remember? Remember what?”

“Remember you and me,” the shadow Akira said, taking a step toward him. “That's the key, that's the one thing he can't touch, is our connections. He can tear us apart to try to keep us from remembering, reminding each other, but everyone is still _here_ , in my palace, as long as I have them in my heart. And as long as I have everyone, I can keep going, no matter how fucked up it all gets.”

Goro narrowed his eyes, staring at the shadow. “What are you talking about?”

Akira took another step toward him, and then another, dropping that dagger he'd been playing with, and then he was right up against Goro, pressing him into the train station wall. He yanked off Goro's helmet, and Goro didn't stop him. Now he was starting to think maybe this was just another sex dream. That would sure make a hell of a lot of sense.

“I'm talking about this,” the shadow said, and he took Goro's lips in a bruising kiss.

Goro immediately met him with equal aggression, wrapping clawed hands around his back and plunging his tongue into Akira's mouth.

“Akechi,” the shadow murmured against his lips, strangely using his surname, and for some reason, Goro preferred it like that. “Want you. Why is that idiot out there—“ did he mean the real Akira? “—so stupid, letting fear get in the way? I should have just made you mine ages ago.”

“I'm not _yours_ ,” Goro growled, but he was grinding his hips against Akira's, moaning under the hands wrapping around his ass to squeeze.

The shadow just laughed. “Yes, you are. You're mine, and I'm yours. No matter what world we're in, we'll be drawn together, like two stars in constant orbit, always circling in an endless dance. We'll always come back to this fight, come back for love of the clash. That's who we are.” Then he pulled away from Goro, leaving him hot, breathless, and hard. The shadow took a few steps back, picking up his abandoned dagger, tossing it in the air and catching it. “But we don't have all the time in the world. I don't want to waste this chance.”

He pointed the dagger at Goro. “Kill me!” he cried, a manic grin on his face. “Destroy me, crush me! Tell me I'm trash! Come on!”

And then, dagger raised, he leaped at Goro.


	18. The Ideal and the Real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the fuckiest violent sex I've ever written, so uhhh warning there. It's a level past Beast, inching into guro territory. ...I guess it is guro. This whole chapter is just self-indulgent porn, really... I need to reward myself for getting to 80k, okay...
> 
> ...But it's fairly consensual! Despite being absolutely absurd violence porn!! “It's all a dream,” okay, realism unnecessary in this scenario. Summary of this chapter: Goro and Shadow Akira indulge in improbable fetishes in dream world.
> 
> This chapter was originally going to have more discussion and stuff after Goro wakes up, but I got carried away with the porn, it's already too long. ...So next chapter.

Shadow Akira leaped at him, dagger raised and aiming for a slash at Goro's face.

Goro reacted on instinct. He raised one foot, kicking the shadow hard in the stomach to send him staggering backward—he didn't waste his advantage, either, pushing forward to follow up with a roundhouse kick with the other leg to the shadow's side.

Akira took it well, though, only making the slightest noise in reaction before jumping back to put some more distance between them. The smile never left his face. “You weren't really trying for real, were you? That wasn't much at all. Guess I've got to help you out...” he sighed, then raised his other hand, and a serrated blade appeared there, which he tossed to Goro. “Here, a handicap. Now you've got reach on me.” He raised his dagger and twirled it over his fingertips.

It was so obvious he was being baited, but that didn't make his attitude any less aggravating. Goro caught the sword, then flipped it around into a backhanded grip, lowering his stance. “At least you're an honest asshole, as a shadow,” Goro matched Akira's grin with a nasty sneer. “It's kind of refreshing to have your arrogance out in the open, instead of pretending you're a nice guy.”

The shadow made a smug noise as he continued to twirl his dagger. That fucker could just never stop showing off. “Do you know what _projection_ is, Akechi? And I _am_ a nice guy. That's how I get people to love me. Maybe you could learn a lesson or two.”

And right as Akira was tossing the dagger into the air just so he could smugly show off even more, Goro charged forward, slashing at his stomach.

This was just a shadow, so he couldn't summon a persona—neither could Goro, and maybe that was just the nature of this dream. So they had to fight the old-fashioned way.

The shadow dropped the dagger to jump back, avoiding Goro's succession of slashes with lazy, efficient movements, one hand in his pocket. When Goro finished off with a deep stab inward, he dodged it with a fancy forward flip, soaring over Goro's head to land behind him. Goro jolted when he felt hands wrapping around his waist from behind and lips nuzzling at his neck.

“You're positively adorable, Akechi,” the shadow murmured in his ear, then jumped away, laughing, as Goro spun around to slash at him again.

“You can't beat me like that,” the shadow said, casually strolling around just out of range with his hands in his jacket pockets, circling him as Goro trailed him with his eyes.

“You were never this fast. You're pulling some weird dream shit,” Goro accused him, and the shadow cocked his head.

“You saw me fight that giant clown, right? I've got more than you realize. _You've_ got more than you realize. So either you catch up...” Akira stopped pacing and took his hands out of his pockets. He turned to Goro, and the smile dropped off his face. “...or I'm going to hurt you.”

Goro hardly saw him coming. There was the metallic flash of a raised dagger, and then suddenly, he was in Akira's embrace. Akira had one hand on his ass, pressing their hips together, rolling against him, and the other hand—Goro looked down belatedly to see it was gripping the dagger plunged into his side.

Goro dropped his sword.

The shadow moaned, burying his face in Goro's neck as he slid the dagger out slightly, then slammed it back in—that was when Goro finally started feeling the pain, and he screamed. He grabbed at Akira with his claws, but Akira pulled away at just the last minute, and Goro only managed to slash shallow lines from the dip of Akira's throat down his chest, wetting the claws of his left hand with blood.

“Mm, that's good,” the shadow said, touching a hand to his chest with a glassy-eyed look, bringing the blood up to his lips to lick it.

“You're insane,” Goro said, yanking the dagger out of his side to toss it away, then pressing a hand against his gushing side. It hurt dizzyingly hard, but he was experienced at getting himself into the kind of headspace where he could ignore pain in a fight.

It wasn't like this revelation about Akira was that surprising—Goro had known he was a thrill-seeker who occasionally popped an adrenaline boner. And Goro had, more than once, dipped off after their time together in Mementos to beat off to the thought of going straight from fighting to fucking. His sexual fantasies veered into the violent more often than not. He'd always just figured that was one more way he was fucked beyond repair, and never imagined he'd get to actually live out any of the disgusting things that went through his head.

He'd never really fantasized about being penetrated like _this,_ though. And he realized now that perhaps at Akira's depths there was more than he'd expected, and as much as it made something tense and confused coil in his gut, it also made his heart race with anticipation.

“You've got the wrong idea, Akechi,” the shadow said as he licked the blood off his glove, then summoned himself a new knife. “This is a dream world with no consequences. I can't kill you, you can't kill me, none of this does permanent damage. Might as well just go for broke. What would be crazy is wasting this opportunity on vanilla sex.” He grinned. “And besides, can you really point fingers?” He spun his dagger, then used it to point at the bulge at Goro's own crotch.

Goro was kind of surprised he was hard—with the way he was gushing blood, you'd think he wouldn't have enough in him for that. But this was a dream, after all—maybe he could do just about anything, if he believed it.

“And I mean,” Akira started tossing up his knife and catching it, starting with one spin per toss, then two spins, “It's your fault I'm like this. I used to be a completely, very normal boy, you know. ...Oh, and here, sorry, let's start over, I got carried away,” he said, snapping his fingers, and instantly, the stab wound on Goro's side was gone. How kind of him.

“You're blaming me that you're a sadist?” Goro said, incredulous.

“It's way more than that,” Shadow Akira said, shaking his head as if he was frustrated. “I mean that I'm in love with you.”

Goro froze, staring at him.

“Why are you so shocked?” Akira said with a laugh, snatching his spinning dagger out of the air. “You don't believe me? Ah, you never believe me. It's fine. I like that about you. It makes the game more fun.” He nodded, then began pacing back and forth, toying with the knife in both hands. “I suppose it's not quite accurate to say I'm in love with you. It's not wrong, but it's not everything. I love a lot of people, after all, and a lot of people love me. And you know, when you love someone, that leaves a mark on you. But none of them are like you.” He turned to Goro and pushed up his mask to show his face, his expression one of utter earnestness. “I need to know, Akechi—is it like that for you, too? Tell me it is,” he said like he was pleading.

“Like...like what?” Goro said. His mind still wasn't catching up to this conversation. It was busy churning out possibilities of what this dream really was, where this Shadow Akira really came from. Just how real was this? Was this actually Akira's heart? He found it hard to believe. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” the shadow brought his hands into fists in front of him, looked down at them, “nothing as mundane as getting along with someone or feeling comfortable with them, or wanting to spend time with them or do things for them—you could have that with anyone. Literally anyone. I don't even mean having a shared goal, or shared values, or a commitment together. I mean someone who gets so deep into you, it makes you question who you are.” He raised his head and leveled his eyes at Goro, and there was something Goro couldn't even begin to name in his eyes that kept Goro locked on the spot, caught in his grasp.

“You made me realize who I really am, and there's no going back,” Akira said.

Goro's throat was too tight, he couldn't trust himself to speak.

The shadow kept on talking, though. “When I woke up in bed with you in his perfect reality, I knew right away it was fake. I mean, it was _happy,_ sure, you were smiling a lot and acting so cute and sweet, and it was nice to have you riding my cock like you didn't want anything else, but...” he sighed, and a smirk crawled up his face. “It was boring. It was _so_ boring. I didn't fall in love with a Goro Akechi who was sweet and kind and gentle. I fell in love with the Goro Akechi who was faking it every minute of the day, who lied to me to my face over and over, who was plotting my murder while he flirted with me.”

“...You've got some weird fucking kinks,” Goro finally managed to wheeze out.

“But that goes for both of us, right?” Akira said, and that look of anxiety was back again as he approached Goro, brought a hand up to cup his cheek, and Goro didn't stop him. Wasn't sure he wanted to. “Can you really envision a world where we just go to school like normal people, then come home and study together and cuddle on the couch and watch _Featherman_? Do you want to sit around playing chess and drinking coffee and doing nothing _real_ with our lives?” Akira leaned in close, and Goro could feel the warmth of his breath on his face. “What a fucking _bonerkill._ If I wanted a sweetheart to cuddle with, I could have picked a dozen others who would make it a hell of a lot easier.”

It wasn't surprising to hear Akira's shadow say this, and Goro had thought exactly the same thing many times—that he simply wasn't suited to that kind of conventional, saccharine relationship. He sometimes wondered if he was a psychopath or something, with all these fucked-up desires and vicious anger. He never felt anything good, so how could he ever possibly love anyone? Everything he felt for Akira made him feel like shit, and it made him want to hurt Akira for having this power over him, and he couldn't be certain that he wouldn't follow through with that. As long as Akira stuck around—and he was sure that wouldn't be long—Goro was going to hurt him, over and over again, accidentally or deliberately. That was just who he was.

But it was strangely painful to hear Akira confirm all those doubts and anxieties out loud. Maybe he'd wanted Akira to lie to him, to play house for him a little longer. Even if it was fake. If Akira wanted something sweet and nice, he could go for Yoshizawa, or any girl he wanted. Goro couldn't even fake being interested in girls, and he couldn't even imagine anything sweet and romantic with another boy. He'd never met a guy like that in his life. The only one who had ever shown real, genuine interest in him—the person he _really_ was—was Akira.

Akira had everyone. He could have whatever he wanted. But Goro had no one but him, and he hated Akira for it.

Akira's knife gently stroked up Goro's neck, nicking his jaw before ghosting over his cheek, and Goro shivered.

“What I want,” Akira murmured as he pressed his lips to one side of Goro's face, the edge of his blade to the other, “is the dance. I don't want it to ever end. That's why I couldn't win you over—I never really wanted you on my side. I _want_ you as my enemy, my rival. That's why I wished to have you back. I want us to dance forever.” As he drew back to look deep into Goro's eyes, Goro felt the gentle stinging of a cut in his cheek, the slow, slick fall of a line of blood running to his chin.

“You love the game as much as I do, don't you?” Shadow Akira said, pleading, begging for the answer he needed.

“I...” Everything this shadow said sent Goro's heart into a morass of confusion and ugly feelings he couldn't even begin to sort through. He was feeling way too fucked up to thinking about what he was saying on an intellectual level, to figure out what was actually going on here. What did he mean, _perfect reality?_ What was this about being enemies or rivals? What the hell kind of weird cognitive shit was this? Was he just saying all of this to mess with Goro's head?

He knew this was important, but right now, Goro couldn't even think about it. He was just overwhelmed by Akira's eyes.

“I don't need you to love me,” Akira murmured, leaning forward to press his lips to the cut on Goro's cheek, run his tongue into the wound, as his hand slid down to rub Goro's crotch. “I just need to know if you need this like I do. If I've torn into your heart and replaced everything, like you've done to me.”

Goro moaned, leaning into him, hips bucking into his hand, and the words spilled out of his lips. “Yes, yes, fuck you,” he said, halfway to a sob. “Fuck you for doing this to me,” he gritted out, reaching up to wrap his claws around Akira's throat.

Shadow Akira just let him do it, eyes closing with a smile in his face as tears of joy fell from his eyes. “I love you so much, Akechi. You're not allowed to leave me, ever again. I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't know who I am without you.”

Goro's hands fell away from him in shock, and he stepped backward, out of Shadow Akira's grasp.

“Oh, I know that was too much,” Shadow Akira said, wiping his face with his gloves, smearing streak of blood across his cheek. “That's why _he_ never says it. I know you won't believe it from me, anyway. You won't be owned by anyone, and that's what I love about you. You don't have to give me anything. I'll do whatever it takes to keep you alive, I'll give you anything, just so long as you keep circling back to dance with me.”

“I don't understand,” Goro shook his head. He realized he was trembling slightly. “I just don't fucking get it. I don't get you. Nothing makes sense. What the hell is this about?!” he yelled at the yellow-eyed shadow. “This isn't even real! You're not real!”

“Believe what you want,” the shadow said, stepping back and raising his knife in front of his face. “But fight with me, and tell me if that feels real.” He flexed the fingers of his other hand, making the leather creak. “I want you to dig deep. Show me that uncontrolled rage you had that time in the engine room when you tried to kill me. That's how far you have to go to remember. It has to be right at your core, where it hurts the most, or you'll never remember. He's gotten good at locking us up, after all those tries. He's done it over a dozen times now, I think, but I'm not even sure myself. You have to be willing to go like _this—”_ Goro jerked in surprise as the shadow plunged his dagger into his own heart, right to the hilt, and smiled. “...to bring it back,” he finished, his voice strained, a bubble of blood appearing at his lips, before he yanked out the blade with a violent red spurt.

Akira stood there for a moment, shoulders twitching, looking like he might just collapse, before he finally raised his hand to snap his fingers and vanish the wound. “...Damn, maybe that was a bit much for dramatic emphasis,” he choked out after a big gasp. “That was really bad, actually. Bad decision.” It would have been funny, if it weren't so gruesome.

“Anyway,” Shadow Akira shook his head. “I've talked enough. It's time for us to fight.” He pointed at Goro, and the serrated sword reappeared in his hands. “Show me that you're good enough!” he barked, and his eyes were dead serious. “Don't you hate me? Don't you want to know if you can surpass me?! Don't you want to grind me into the dust?!”

He didn't give Goro a chance to answer, though, leaping at him to slash him in the face.

Shadow Akira was relentless.

It wasn't a fight, it was a curb-stomp. The shadow stabbed him over and over, tossing him on the ground, then kicking him, grinding his heel into the wounds, making Goro scream. “Stop fucking around!” the shadow sneered at him, stepping on Goro's face and using his boot to turn his face toward him. “You want to be stuck like this forever? Under someone's heel? Wake the fuck up!” Akira kicked him across the hallway of the train station, then snapped his fingers, fully healing all his wounds so they could do it all over again.

Goro lost track of the number of times the shadow beat him into a pulp and then healed him again. It was all starting to blur into one parade of pain-then-relief, and with every round, the shadow became more distraught.

“What do I have to say to get through to you?!” he said, clawing at his hair. “What hurts you the most? Please, you've got to tell me,” he said, and it was kind of bizarre to see him desperate and pleading when he was the one in control, while Goro was sprawled on the floor in all sorts of blood and bodily fluids, trying to get his mind into some semblance of order when all he could think about Akira's hands on him, either stroking him or stabbing him, it was all kind of the same.

He'd gotten hard a couple times, then lost it again when it hurt too much. There had been one point when he'd been bleeding out on the ground while Akira ground his cock underfoot, when Goro had begged him not to stop and then cut halfway through Akira's shin, never one to overlook an opening. Goro's organs had left his body at least twice—and that wasn't even a new sight for him, he'd had that happen before, but it had been a long time since he'd seen his guts on the outside, spilling onto the ground with that distinctive stench. It was kind of nostalgic, in a fucked-up way. At one point, his arm went flying, and that was a new experience, though—grabbing the stump and feeling nothing there. But then Akira healed him again, and it all went back to normal.

The moment Akira had had him pressed up against a wall, both hands around his neck and raised up just slightly off the ground while he ground their cocks together, Goro had just about cum, but then he'd blacked out. Or he thought he had. He wasn't sure anymore. This was kind of reminding him of those early days, when he'd just awakened to his powers and hardly knew what he was doing in the Metaverse, when he'd just gotten beaten down over and over and over, somehow miraculously surviving through it all.

Was all that shit the reason this was doing it for him now? Had the Metaverse just marked him that deeply, made him want everything that had hurt him until he was diving in headfirst? It wasn't even just about arousal in the sexual sense—in some ways, the times when it hurt too much to get off on, when it was just a bloody fight and nothing else, were the best. It was a kind of madness, and it was getting difficult to know where his boundaries were.

But nothing made him harder than seeing that same madness in Shadow Akira's yellow eyes.

“What are you trying to get me to remember?” Goro said dazedly as he pushed himself up off the mucky ground. His head was a mess, but his body kept coming back. He felt like he could go forever, and the thought of that both thrilled and terrified him. “Why can't you just talk straight to me?”

“Because that won't work!” Akira snapped back at him. “It doesn't matter what I say to you here! I have no real power! This whole thing...” he waved his hands, “is just inside my head! I have to find the trigger—I have to find what cuts you deeper than anything else!” He rubbed his hands over his face in frustration, and then a nasty grin started growing there as his hands came down.

“Oh, I'm surprised Shido was willing to use someone as incompetent as you,” Akira said, and immediately, Goro's blood ran cold.

“How do you know about him,” Goro said, tone low, as he adjusted his stance, sword in hand.

“Oh, you think I didn't know? You didn't realize I was just playing you, all this time?” Akira said, sneering down at him. “I knew all about your asinine revenge plan. How many levels of denial do you have to be in, to think that Shido wasn't just going to throw you away, in the end? ...Did you want a pat on the head from daddy that badly? Did you think _anyone_ with a brain would think you're worth keeping?”

Goro didn't even think. It was like a switch went off in his head, and he went from zero to bloodlust in an instant, throwing himself at the shadow with a scream, shoving his serrated blade into Shadow Akira's side and wrenching outward. A spray of blood hit his face, and that woke something in him, that dark bubbling rage that he both hated and needed to sustain himself. Akira backed away, but Goro wouldn't let him put distance between them, pushing forward to swing his blade in an arc for Akira's neck. Rage made him faster, stronger, more resistant to pain. Without this, he would certainly have died any number of times in the Metaverse, and crumbled with despair outside of it. As much as he was ashamed of his lack of control, he knew this made him who he was.

In the moment, the only thing in his head was Akira's blood, the urge to get under his skin. Akira blocked the blade with his arm, and it dug deep into the flesh of his forearm. Goro dragged the serration across the bone, grinning when Akira screamed, yanking back the blade to spin around and slash at his other side.

Goro abandoned everything. He forgot anything that happened earlier than a split second ago, his only attention on the sensations in his body in the moment and the screaming urge for destruction that only became more intense the more he managed to destroy. His claws dug into Akira's flesh more than once, he learned what Akira's blood tasted like. He was tossed away, kicked, punched, stabbed, and stomped on, each time only bouncing back with further desire to dig deep into Akira and make him submit. He wasn't sure who was winning. He only knew that his prey was still alive.

At one point he did get Akira on the ground, claws wrapped around his neck as he mindlessly ground his ass into Akira's erection. There was a dull ache in his leg and another in his side, and his costume was sticky with blood as Akira bucked underneath him—either struggling or going for more friction, Goro was beyond knowing. He could feel the drip of precum sliding down his cock as it rubbed against the inside of his costume, each rock of his ass further building the torture. Akira's hard length slotting into the crevice of his ass was driving him insane. He didn't know how to stop. He just kept squeezing until he felt a _snap._

The moment he let go, though, Akira's eyes opened again, and he tilted his neck as if getting a kink out before surging up to bowl Goro over, and the two of them went rolling over the black, mucky floors until Shadow Akira had him pinned, knife pressed to his throat. “I just can't hold back anymore,” the shadow moaned, and then he wrenched up one of Goro's legs and just _ripped_ his costume open in a way that certainly wasn't possible in real life, exposing his asshole and balls. Goro kicked at him with the raised leg, but Akira pressed the knife against his throat, drawing a line of blood from his neck, while his other hand unbuckled his own pants to draw out his rock-hard cock. He dipped his hand into the open slice on his chest and smeared the blood over his erection before pressing the head against Goro's pucker, then shoved himself in all at once with no preparation.

Goro's whole body shook, his claws digging chunks out of the ground as Shadow Akira forced himself in violently, taking his pleasure how he wanted it—it hurt, but everything hurt right now, and that was mattering less and less the more time wore on. His world narrowed down to the cool of the knife blade on his neck and the burning sensation of Akira's cock slamming against his prostate—one, two thrusts, and Goro was cumming, hips jerking, soaking the front of his costume where his cock tented the cloth. Every time he moaned, he felt the vibration of his throat bringing the knife blade just that much deeper.

“You're so fucking tight,” Akira groaned as he plunged himself in to the balls, drawing back all the way just to slam himself in again. “I always wanted to fuck you like this. Just have my way with you, make you take it.”

Goro gasped, his body reflexively jerking away as Akira pounded his hole, which had grown sensitive and raw after his orgasm, painful in a different kind of way from all the other sensations racking his body. “Y-you...sick fuck...”

“After you snapped my neck riding me, I don't think you're allowed to talk,” Akira said, letting his knife slide to the side of Goro's neck to just dip slightly into the flesh there, drawing a line of blood. “Want me to stab you again, while I fuck you?” he said, breathless, hips snapping against Goro's ass. “Just to see if you can get off on it, or if it's too much.”

Goro chuckled, and something in his side hurt when he did, the knife cutting into his Adam's apple. “Why are you even asking? You're going to be that disgustingly nice, even when you've got a knife against my throat and a bloody cock in my ass? Fucking destroy me already, you pussy.”

“Heh. Figured you'd say that,” Akira said, and he drew the knife away from Goro's neck, raising it up to slam down into his abdomen, not far from where Akira's cock filled him.

Goro didn't even have the wind to scream, arching back open-mouthed as the slick blade pulled out in the same motion as Akira's hips, then thrust back in again. He might have blacked out a moment, or a few moments—it felt like Akira healed him at one point, and Goro heaved in a gasp of air as he came to—the pain overwhelmed everything else, and he only realized the shaking he felt was another orgasm when Akira ripped open his costume to smear his hand through the cum that mixed with the blood on Goro's stomach and lick it. Akira yanked out the knife, discarded it, and healed him again, shoving up Goro's other leg to pound into him at a deeper angle, and Goro reached up to shred Akira's back with his claws, digging in to hold him close.

“F-fuck, Akechi...” Akira moaned, and now that the agony wasn't filling his consciousness anymore, Goro could feel the cum squelching out of his ass with every thrust. “That hurts so good... I love it when you hurt me... You're so good at it, never stop, fuck, I—” He thrust deep, back arching, one hand holding Goro down by the shoulder, and Goro felt cold metal on his other cheek. He didn't realize it was a gun until Akira fired it—once, twice, deafeningly close to his ear.

Goro's ears were ringing, he didn't hear what Akira was saying at first, just saw his lips moving. But he was repeating the same thing. “Please remember, Akechi, I need you to remember...”

“Remember _what?_ ” Goro finally managed to croak out. “ _What?!_ ”

“Remember how you _died!_ ” Shadow Akira yelled at him, and Goro saw he was crying again. He displayed all his emotions so openly on the surface—that was what a shadow was, after all. “I can't forget it, how could you forget?! Do you not care?! Was dying so easy for you?! Did you want it?! You should hate me for it! For killing you! Why isn't that enough?! Why isn't that enough to make you remember?!” he moaned, open despair in his eyes. “I don't know. I don't know.” He shook his head, then pressed the gun into Goro's hands. “If you hate me enough, I'm sure you'll remember. I need you to hate me. _Please_.” He shaped Goro's fingers around the grip and forced Goro to point the gun at him.

Suddenly, everything around Goro froze. He wasn't on his back anymore. He was in a cold, sterile room, pointing a gun at Akira's forehead, and Akira's eyes were wide with shock, and his heart was full of victory, and he'd been here before, he'd seen this before. _He knew this._

“No, I don't—” Goro whimpered, shaking his head, and the rest of the words he was thinking wouldn't come out of his mouth.

_No no no no no—I don't want to remember—don't make me—_

x x x

Goro jolted awake in an unfamiliar bed.

The first thing he noticed was the sticky sensation in his pants—he knew he'd cum in his sleep.

The second thing he noticed was the pair of arms wrapped around him, and the warmth against his back. Hips rocked against him from behind, as those arms squeezed him tight enough to hurt.

Goro flailed in shock, shoving away the other body and practically falling out of bed, scrambling backwards over the floor to look up at Akira, rubbing his eyes blearily as he said, “...Hmm? Goro?” like he was half-awake.

“Y-you're not...” Goro felt so disoriented. He was still half in the dream, though it was quickly fading—all he remembered now was a lot of pain, and the ache of his lingering orgasm, and the cool metal of a gun in his hands. “You're not real. This is a dream. It's another dream.”

Akira pushed himself up out of the bed. “I feel like I had some weird dream...” he rotated his neck as if there was a crick in it. “Are you okay? You passed out after that distortion collapsed, so I took you back to my place. I, uh...” he scratched the back of his head like he was embarrassed. “I was really tired, so I just fell into the same bed without thinking. I wasn't doing anything weird in my sleep, was I?”

Goro stared up at him, and slowly, memories of the previous night came back to him. Of killing the master of that distortion. Of that argument with Yoshizawa. He realized he was in Akira's apartment. “...I have to go,” he said, scrambling to his feet. He looked down at himself and saw he was wearing Akira's pajamas. “Where are my clothes?”

“Hey, hey,” Akira said, sliding out of the bed to approach Goro, but Goro backed away from him, turning around to search the bedroom for his clothing, and when he got it, he scooped it all up and went straight for Akira's bathroom, slamming the door behind him and locking it.

He stepped out of Akira's pajama pants, grabbing some toilet paper to wipe up the mess of cum on his stomach and tossing it into the toilet, and as he got changed, he heard Akira talking outside the bathroom door.

“I'm sorry if I did anything weird,” Akira said as Goro got his pants on with shaky hands. They weren't even wrinkled, and had been carefully laid over the back of the desk chair in Akira's bedroom. “I just wanna talk about some stuff. Like what Yoshizawa said...” he sighed. “You won't tell me what's going on?”

Goro shrugged into his dress shirt, but didn't bother with his tie or blazer, then yanked open the bathroom door—Akira stumbled forward, but Goro brushed past him. “Where's my briefcase?”

“Hey, hey, hold on,” Akira said, but Goro swiftly found his briefcase sitting by the door, and went to pick it up, sliding his feet into his shoes and reaching out for the door.

He unlocked the door, and was opening it, meaning to step out, when a hand came down above his and slammed the door shut. He looked up to see Akira there, glaring right at him.

“Let me out,” Goro said, his tone calm and utterly cool, and he yanked at the door, opening it a crack.

But Akira shoved it shut again. “No. You're not leaving.”

“I have to go to school, Akira,” Goro said.

“It's _Sunday._ ”

Goro's mouth opened, his jaw moving up and down uselessly a few times as he groped for something to say, but all there was in his head was panic.

As always, though, anger saved him. “Get out of my business,” he spat, “And stop pretending that you care about my li—”

Before Goro even realized what was happening, Akira's hands were bunched in his shirt, shoving him against the wall—he struggled, shoving at Akira's shoulders, but when Akira's mouth crashed into his, he froze.

Akira dragged his mouth over Goro's still lips, his tongue grazing over Goro's teeth like he was trying to get in, daring him to bite. “Goro,” he breathed, following up with kisses across his cheek and down his neck and unbuttoned collar, butterfly-gentle, only to bite into his neck and suck at it, hard and possessive.

Goro's knees weakened, barely able to hold himself up as he slumped against the wall, and it felt like the air he was breathing wasn't enough for his lungs. “Akira,” he croaked, and he hated the sound of his own voice.

“I'm not letting you go,” Akira murmured against his neck, and Goro dropped his briefcase.


	19. Faulty Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and inserted more foreshadowing and shifted some scenes around, as per usual. I added a mention that in the original world, Akira's parents didn't give much of a damn about him, and that in this world, Akira does not wear glasses, and also, that the deeper areas of Mementos are locked away. (I really should have stated that fact early on, it's sort of important!)
> 
> Unrelated, but: https://twitter.com/belialsvoice/status/1292121391311945729
> 
> Send me prompts on curiouscat. Preferably porn prompts (I'm much more likely to write that).

“Stay, and let's talk,” Akira said, right close to Goro's ear, and he could feel Goro shiver.

Across the jumble of memories of all the lives he'd had, there was very little that was consistent.

At first he'd had friends, but then slowly, they'd been plucked away from him, one by one—because that was where his power came from. It had been a deliberate move to contain him. And now, there were just two left—Sumire and Goro. Akira wondered if he failed this time, if these two would be taken away from him, too.

There were so many little things about his life that weren't right anymore, he wasn't sure what had been there to begin with. He remembered parents who loved him dearly and visited regularly, parents who loved him but couldn't be with him, parents who were a little distant, and parents who had entirely washed their hands of him.

Which were the real ones?

His gut was telling him that the most painful of any of these scenarios had to be the real one.

The only things that had been consistent across every life were the presence of Sumire and Goro, and neither of them had ever been quite the same people in each iteration. He remembered Sumire being bright and cheerful and calling herself Kasumi, Sumire in utter despair _(where? In a distortion? What kind?)_ , Goro being sweet and affectionate and his lover, and Goro being angry and vindictive and his killer.

He was fairly sure the happy versions were not the real ones.

So then what of himself? What was the real Akira Kurusu? Was he the kind listening ear who always helped a friend in need? Or was he the lowkey manipulator who gave people what they wanted so he could get what he needed?

These days, he didn't feel like either.

Maybe he was no one.

He felt Goro's cheek against his own. This—this was the one thing that had been exactly the same, every time. Him and Goro had always been together. This was what held him together, when everything else was being torn away from him. Without this—

_(No. He needs me as much as I need him. I know it.)_

“Akira,” Goro said, his voice low and shaky. “I really don't fucking want to talk.” And then he grabbed Akira by the hair and mashed their lips together.

Akira tried to draw back, but Goro came forward, yanking him by the belt. One step, two, and Goro was pushing him backward into the kitchen, his hands all over Akira's rumpled shirt, sliding down to grab his ass as their lips worked against each other.

“Goro, listen—” Akira broke the kiss to say.

But Goro took his face in a hawk-claw grasp, silencing him with his tongue, then started tugging his belt undone with fumbling hands. “Did you enjoy the show, in that distortion?” Goro growled as he pulled down Akira's fly and shoved his hand into his pants. “Did you imagine me sucking _your_ cock?”

“Goro, I—” Akira was cut off when Goro squeezed his hand around his dick and began rubbing his semi into full hardness.

“Don't tell me you're above this,” Goro said in his ear, his voice full of venom, as his hand jerked Akira at an aggressive pace. “I've seen your phone, I know how many guys you fuck, you _whore_.”

“Goro!” Akira grabbed his shirt at the shoulders and shoved him off forcefully—perhaps too forcefully, and Goro's back smacked into the opposite cabinet. “I don't have the _time_ for your fucking _jealousy_ shit right now! There were a whole bunch of reasons I wasn't actively trying to get in your pants that don't even matter right now, and it's not like you ever made your intentions clear either, so you can't point fingers—but just _listen_ for one damn second!” Akira was losing his temper, and he knew this was bad, but he couldn't put this off any longer. Something had happened the previous night—some kind of dream that had left him with dried cum crusted on the inside of his pants, and there'd been some shuffling around in his unconscious, and he was remembering more and more— _except_ for a handful of details that he was absolutely certain were the key to figuring out just what was going on.

The name of the _Counselor—_ the most important figure—that was inaccessible. _The Fool—_ whatever it was, he had the feeling it was gone, and he didn't have to worry about it. _Strength—_ he had the feeling he had to save her, and it was a _her,_ but that was all. Where was she? What had been done to her?

He knew Mementos was key, but Mementos was locked, and he couldn't get into its depths. The other thing that was key was—a figure of power, he was sure, and that figure was key to getting to the bottom of Mementos. The name was there, on the tip of his tongue. It was like it was already in his mind, but he just couldn't quite access it. He could have sworn he'd seen that face in his dreams.

And Goro knew who it was.

“Goro,” Akira said, looking him straight in the eye. Goro's expression was a tight mask, preventing anything from leaking out. “What are you hiding from me?”

Goro's mask twisted into a bitter scowl, and he didn't answer.

Akira forced himself to calm down, pulling his pants back up so he didn't feel like an idiot. He had to say all the right things, to get Goro to open up. _So_ much was riding on it.

But when had he _ever_ been able to do that? In any life he'd lived?

“Look,” Akira began as he did up his belt, trying to explain himself in a way that didn't sound crazy, “You know how Sumire's existence has been erased, and everyone was treating her like her sister? There's a reason for that. There's some kind of...” he waved his hands vaguely, “greater power here, fucking with her. And it's fucking with you and me, too, with our memories and identities.”

The anger slowly melted off Goro's face, turning to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Back in that palace...what happened triggered my memories. I remember—the whole world being different. This world is _fake,_ Goro. It's been designed to trap us, to keep us from fighting, because we have this power to oppose whoever is keeping us here.”

Goro scoffed. “Are you for real?” he said, incredulous.

Akira reached up to scrunch at his hair. “I know this sounds insane. Can you just trust me?”

Goro seemed to ponder a moment before saying, “Trust you how? What do you want?”

“I need you to tell me everything,” Akira said, gaze leveled straight at Goro. “There are some gaps in my memory, and I'm sure that if we talk, it will trigger what I need to know.”

Goro scowled again. “This is bullshit,” he said, turning away, but Akira grabbed his shoulder.

“Goro,” Akira pleaded, “just trust me. I need your help for this. I can't do it alone.”

Goro's expression softened, and he looked down. “...No. I'm sorry.” He paused a long moment, staring at the linoleum tile. “Maybe...in a year's time, if...if you still want it, I can tell you everything. But not now.”

“We don't have that kind of time!” Akira wasn't sure why, but he knew there was a time limit. So much time had passed already. The more time that passed, the worse it would get—and it might become irreparable, trapped forever. He needed to get to the bottom of this situation as soon as possible. “Goro,” he said, working hard to keep his tone even, “whatever shit you've got going on, it's nothing, compared to what's hanging over our heads.”

“What do you know?” Goro spat.

“I know literally just what you tell me, Goro,” Akira said with unveiled irritation. “And you don't tell me a hell of a lot, do you? And how much of it is even true?”

“I'm under _no_ obligation to tell you anything,” Goro said, and turned away from him.

Akira damn angry now, but mostly at himself. He knew he was saying all the wrong things. He just had to sort this out _now,_ and he didn't know how to make Goro understand. Why was it he had no trouble with anyone else, but when it came to Goro, he just kept fucking it up?

Akira took a deep breath. “How about—we make a deal? You tell me everything you're hiding from me, and I'll offer you something in return.”

“Like what?” Goro snorted, turning to him again. “Sex? Please, your dick isn't _that_ enticing.”

“ _Fuck_ , Goro!” Akira snapped. “Can you just _listen_ to me?! When have I ever done anything to make you doubt me? And now here I am asking _you_ for something for once, and this is what I get?”

“Yeah, Akira, this _is_ what you get,” Goro shot back. “We had a deal—which you _broke—_ that I get you off the hook, and you help me, and that's _it._ We were never friends, we were never anything _else,_ and you're a stupid fucking idiot for ever expecting anything else from someone like me,” he said, and his voice started sounding raw toward the end.

Akira lost it.

He grabbed Goro by the shirt and kissed him, all teeth, slamming him back against the kitchen cabinets. Goro responded with desperation, clinging to his shirt, drawing him close.

“You make me crazy,” Akira moaned against his lips as his hands rapidly unbuckled Goro's belt, and Goro was rolling up Akira's turtleneck—they broke the kiss for only a moment for him to yank it over Akira's head and toss it aside.

“Shut up,” Goro said hoarsely, drawing their lips together again as Akira plunged his hands into Goro's pants to grab his bare cheeks and squeeze.

Akira pressed up against him, rolling their hips together, enjoying the little gasp it brought from Goro's lips as he kneaded Goro's ass. “How bad did you want this?” he murmured in Goro's ear. “How many times did you beat off thinking of me?”

“Shut up, you arrogant f—” Goro's insult broke into a moan as Akira ground harder against him, feeling the firm outline of Goro's erection against his thigh.

“How many _times?_ ” Akira demanded, his fingers sinking into the crevice of Goro's ass, drawing Goro closer to him. Goro's only answer was a moan, so Akira decided to answer for him with a scalding whisper in his ear. “It was every night, wasn't it? Cumming in your hand, thinking about having my cock inside you.”

Goro's hips bucked against him, and Akira ghosted his fingertip over the rim of Goro's asshole, teasing.

“You want to pretend we were never even _friends_ when you want me this bad?” Akira said, putting all his anger into his grip, one hand kneading Goro's plump cheek as he pulled the other out of his back of his pants to reach down in front and draw out his cock. He fisted it, rubbing his his thumb over the leaking tip, and Goro threw back his head, knocking it against the cabinet behind him. “Stop lying to yourself.”

“F-fuck you,” Goro gritted out, but he was thrusting into Akira's fist, pathetically chasing his pleasure in Akira's grasp. The head of his cock slipped between Akira's fingers, disappearing and reappearing, the softness of Goro's foreskin shifting and pulling in his grip.

“No, Goro,” Akira said with a nasty grin. “I'm going to fuck _you._ ” He withdrew his hands, leaving Goro panting and unsatisfied with his bared, red cock exposed between them as he slumped back against the kitchen counter.

Drawing away, Akira said, “Turn around and lean on the counter. Pull your pants down.”

It was a testament to how much Goro wanted it that he didn't even argue, he just did it, while Akira cast about the kitchen, then spying a bottle of cooking oil on the counter, he dumped a bunch over his hand and slid his middle finger into Goro's waiting ass. It was surprisingly easy to get in, so Akira slid in his index finger as well and began leisurely pushing them in and out, curling his digits to slide over soft nub within.

“You've been playing with your ass, huh?” Akira said, turned on just by the thought of Goro with one hand on his dick, the other fingers in his ass as he pleasured himself, calling Akira's name. “You just wanted to get fucked that bad?”

“Just shut up and do it,” Goro moaned, pushing back against Akira's hand, matching his rhythm.

“Maybe if you beg for my cock,” Akira said with a smirk.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Mmm, we've been over this.” Akira slid his other hand down over Goro's balls to gently stroke his length. Goro was already dripping precum onto the floor, his balls pulled tight and ready to cum, his cock red against his stomach. His ass spasmed around Akira's fingers, practically pushing them out.

Akira didn't really have the patience to tease him, though—the confines of his pants were already painful, and the moment he had his fly open and his cock out, he pressed his cock against Goro's hole—he pushed the head in slowly, and Goro moaned, stretching around him, but halfway, Akira just lost control, grabbing Goro's hips to slam him all the way back onto Akira's dick.

“Ahhh!” Goro's hands sank down the kitchen cupboards, his body weight sinking onto the counter, and his ass was _so tight_ around Akira's cock, squeezing him as Goro rocked back into him, fucking himself on Akira's length with helpless abandon as he shot ropes of white against the cupboards below him.

“Damn, are you—” Akira gasped as he met Goro's rocking with thrusts of his own, hips slapping against Goro's bare cheeks. “Are you cumming? Just from having me inside you?”

“Shut up,” Goro moaned, breathless, “Just fuck me, shut up.”

Akira was all too happy to comply.

He pounded Goro's sensitive hole until he screamed from the overstimulation, reaching around up his shirt to grab his nipples and twist, drawing a whimper from him. Goro's softening cock bounced under him, dripping leftover cum onto the kitchen tile as Akira pounded him until his asshole was stretched and red.

“You've already cum, and you still want more?” Akira said. He was on the edge of orgasm himself, playing that mental game with himself to keep it from ending too soon. He want to fuck Goro until he cried, milk cum from his cock until he had nothing left, make him scream Akira's name like it was the only thing he could ever cling to, make his body remember this so well he'd never forget it again.

“Shut up, just shut _up,_ ” Goro said breathlessly.

In response, Akira drew Goro back against his chest to bite the juncture of his neck, digging in hard enough to draw blood. He wanted to mark Goro _forever_. “You want this more than anything,” he murmured against Goro's skin.

“Shut up, shut up shut up,” Goro moaned as if he couldn't say anything else, but he was arching back into Akira's cock, meeting his rhythm with jerks of his hips as Akira's fingers continued to pinch and yank at his nipples under his shirt. He was half-hard again, his cock jumping with each twist of his sensitive nubs, so Akira continued to play with them, feeling Goro's ass tighten as he did.

“I want you, too,” Akira whispered in his ear, feeling himself come close. “No one else makes me feel like you do. Every time I fucked someone else, I was thinking about cumming in your ass.”

“Akira...” Goro moaned brokenly. “Akira!”

Akira thrust deep once, twice more, the head of his cock dragging over Goro's prostate, and then he was filling Goro up, fucking him through it until there was cum leaking out of his ass and sliding down his thighs with every thrust. He hugged Goro close to him as he stayed buried deep inside, panting.

The both of them took a moment to catch their breaths.

After a long moment, Akira drew back, pulling out, and grabbed some paper towels from on top of the fridge.

“Can we sit down and talk now?” Akira said as he handed Goro a paper towel.

Turning around with his pants down around his ankles, Goro leaned back against the kitchen counter and accepted the paper towel. His lips were swollen, his pupils were blown wide, there was blood on his collar from the bite on his neck, his cock was hard again and sticking up aggressively, and cum was leaking down his thighs. Frankly, he looked wrecked.

“...Okay,” he croaked.

x x x

They had a shower first—one which involved maybe only twenty percent actual washing, twenty percent making out, forty percent Akira dropping to his knees to suck Goro off under the beating water, and twenty percent Goro plunging into Akira's ass with soapy fingers.

It was hard to concentrate on a crisis to the world when all you could think about was filling your longtime rival with your cum, but somehow, Akira pulled himself together, and Goro gave him some clean clothes to wear (they were about the same size) and Akira fried them some eggs for a half-assed breakfast (there wasn't anything else in Goro's fridge) and they finally plopped down on the couch to talk about an hour and a half later.

“How about this,” Akira said, pulling the chess board on the coffee table toward them. It was a half-played game between them from a couple days ago. As always, Akira played black, while Goro played white. Strangely, that had been true in every life, too. “We finish this game. And if you win, I'll continue to help you with your mission without another complaint. But if I win, you have to tell me everything.”

Goro gave him an incredulous look. “You're obviously losing that game. There's no way you can win.”

Akira turned to him with a smirk, and raised his hand to push up his glasses—and then remembered he had none. He didn't wear them, in this life. He dropped his hand. “Well then, there's no reason for you to say no, right?”

Goro narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He surely figured there had to be a catch, but regardless, said, “All right then.”

So Akira circled the table to sit down on the other side, and Goro slid off the couch to sit on the floor opposite him, and they resumed their old game.

Before Akira had regained his memories, he'd lost to Goro in chess about seventy percent of the time, and Goro was right—this game would have been a lost cause. But with all his past memories of having played Goro time and time again, things were different. Akira was no chess master, but he did know this particular opponent better than anyone.

Goro started off the game careless—he was so assured of his victory, he wasn't looking as closely as he should have. By the time he was frowning to himself, noticing that there was something odd happening on the board, it was too late—in a sequence of moves with two pawns and a knight, Akira had his king cornered in a decisive checkmate.

Goro stared at the board like he couldn't believe it, and Akira could see him mentally replaying the last few moves in his mind, trying to figure out where Akira had pulled the wool over his eyes. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

“I won,” Akira said smugly. “So it's time for you to talk.”

“You must have cheated,” Goro accused him.

“If I did, then you let me get away with it by not looking,” Akira said slyly, and Goro's expression turned angry.

“There's no way you could have beaten me!” He smacked the table, standing up.

“But I did. Are you going to be a sore loser, then?” Akira stood up as well. “Or are you going to honor your promise?”

Goro shook his head, then dropped back onto the couch behind him. Now that his loss was starting to sink in, there was panic building in his eyes. “You _cheated,_ ” he said again, bringing a hand to the side of his forehead, and it sounded more desperate, this time.

“But I won. Life is unfair that way.” Akira leaned his knees against the table and folded his arms. “Now tell me everything.”

“No,” Goro shook his head.

Akira leaned forward, putting pressure on him. “We made a _deal._ ”

“I'm sorry. I can't,” Goro shook his head again, his manner growing progressively more agitated.

“Why not?!” Akira blew up at him, running out of patience. “Why can't you tell me what you're hiding from me?!”

Goro ran both his hands through his hair, once, twice, three times. “I'm sorry. Anything else, please.”

Akira breathed out slowly, then reached out to his phone on the table. “Guess I'll just have to call Sumire and ask her what she knows, then.” He really hadn't wanted to do this—he wanted Goro to be the one to tell him. But this was more important than Goro's trust issues.

But Goro leaped forward, knocking half the chess pieces off the table to grab at Akira's phone, yanking it out of his grasp. “You're not calling her,” he said, and his voice was shaking, his eyes harsh, his fingers white-knuckled around Akira's phone.

“Give me back my phone,” Akira said sharply, holding out his hand. “You can't keep me from talking to Sumire forever. I'm going to find out.”

Goro kept Akira's phone in a death grip in both hands as he sat on the couch, eyes on the mess of chess pieces on the coffee table and the floor. “No,” he said, voice tight. “I won't let you.”

“Why?!” Akira repeated in frustration for what felt like about the millionth time in a row. “Haven't I done everything for you? Don't you trust me? Why can't you tell me?!”

Goro's hands on the phone trembled. Akira thought he might break the screen, he was squeezing it so hard. He looked down, his hair falling over his eyes, curtaining his face from Akira's sight, and he didn't answer for a long moment. When he did finally speak, it was deathly quiet, and half in sobs. “...Because you'll leave me.”

“Goro, I'm not going to—”

“Yes, you will!” Goro's head snapped up, revealing angry tears streaking down his cheeks. “Don't fucking lie to me. Don't fucking _lie_!” He stood up in a bound and threw Akira's phone on the table. “Go ahead and ask her everything,” he snarled. “At least _she's_ someone you can trust to be honest with you.” And then he started stalking off for the door again, but Akira caught him by the wrist and yanked him back—Goro wrenched away his arm, but Akira caught him around the waist, pulling him close.

“Don't,” Goro said like he was begging, but his pulling against Akira's grip was weak and half-hearted. “You're just going to make it so much harder.”

“I'm not going to leave you,” Akira said softly against the back of his neck.

“You don't know,” Goro shook his head. “I'm not who you think I am.”

“Who are you, then?” Akira squeezed both hands around his stomach, hugging him tight.

“...Someone so much more pathetic, foolish and weak than you know,” Goro choked out, his voice as feeble as a spider thread.

“I'll love you anyway,” Akira said into his hair, and Goro's shoulders shook against his chest.

x x x

Goro finally told him.

When Goro said the name _Shido_ and explained that he was in fact a hitman for his politician father, Akira remembered more and more, and everything started falling into place. This story felt more right than _vigilante._

There were still a lot of conflicting details. He remembered a life where Goro had been a bloodless vigilante, a life where his father had been the one to trick and manipulate him into killing, and now this one. Akira didn't think he was lying. But it seemed Goro's life and identity was just as garbled as his was, if not more. He remembered a life where Goro had a living mother and a loving father, and _that_ one seemed like the biggest bullshit version—but the one where Goro had been lying catatonic in a bed, lost to the world, that felt all too real.

He also remembered a life where Goro had died. More than one life where Goro had died.

The more Akira thought back on his own life, the more he began to doubt everything. What had his childhood _actually_ been like? How far back? Had he been popular at school, or shunned? Where had he learned to make curry? The more he thought about it, the more he didn't know.

“You're not mad that I've been lying to you and using you this whole time?” Goro said, half-incredulous, half-accusatory. They were sitting side-by-side on the couch again, discussing the situation at hand.

Akira scratched his cheek. “It's hard to explain—now that you've said it to me, I feel like I already know it. It's not a shock. And,” he gave a wry smile, “my memories include lives where you did far worse.”

“I've literally manipulated you into killing for my revenge plot,” Goro said, shaking his head. “I don't get you.”

Akira didn't quite get it himself. Maybe it was the vague, fuzzy way all these kills occupied his memory—he had a hard time even remembering their names and faces. At this point, he was doubting the reality of everything, his and Goro's murders included, but he wasn't sure how much of that was because of his memory issues, and how much was some weird form of denial. At the very least, they had bigger fish to fry right now.

“You don't have to get it,” Akira said with a wave of his hand. “What I really need is to trigger your memory, as well. And that requires digging into your most painful memory of your original life—you need a reminder of whatever happened then that hurt the most.”

Goro's brow furrowed, hand rising to his chin as he considered. “What was it for you?”

“Your death,” Akira said, completely serious.

Goro blanched, and then blushed, then cleared his throat. “Well, what do you think might trigger mine— _if_ you're not simply just losing your mind,” he added dryly.

Akira shook his head slowly. “I don't know. I think it might be your own death, or your mother's death, or something your father did. But I think you have to pursue it yourself. I can't force you to remember. That's part of how this whole thing works—the Counselor is trying to keep us from reaching out to each other.”

“The Counselor?”

“That's just what he is in my mind—all the other memories are locked. He did it to protect himself.” Akira sighed. “But there's one thing I do know. Your father is the key to all this. I'm sure you know he has a distortion. A ship, right?”

Goro gave him a surprised look. “How do you know that?”

“I told you,” Akira tapped his head, “My other set of memories. That's how I beat you at chess,” he said with a smirk, “and that's how I remember that when we tore down his distortion, it opened the lowest gates of the shadowy train station. I know the Counselor is hiding down there. So we go in there—you, me, and Sumire—and we erase his shadow.” If possible, Akira wanted to track down the other Phantom Thieves and rope them into this, but that depended on what their situation was now—and if he could get them to unlock their memories.

Goro pinched the bridge of his nose, considering a moment. “You're telling me to kill my father?”

“Don't you want him dead?”

Goro laughed mirthlessly. “If I could have, I would have already. He got some cognitive researchers to put some kind of...psychic door in his distortion. You can't get through it.”

“Every lock can be picked,” Akira leaned back against the couch, putting his feet up on the table. The chess pieces were still scattered on the floor. “The three of us can figure it out. It'll be easier in there with help, right?”

Goro shook his head again. “And even if we do that—how do you know killing him will open the doors of the train station? I'm sure that has something to do with public recognition.”

“Well, let's just make it clear it's a revenge move by vigilantes of justice. Write up a letter beforehand, say it's to pay for his crimes. It'll be on TV and everything. That will give the killers—us—some public notoriety.” That was quite a nostalgic proposition, and how ironic that he was now proposing it for straight murder rather than the changing of hearts.

But Akira had no intention of changing someone's heart ever again. And he was sure Goro would prefer Shido dead, too.

Goro still didn't seem quite convinced. “I don't know...”

“...Or do you not want to kill him?”

“Of course I do!” Goro snapped, voice dripping with clear venom and hatred.

“Then let's do it,” Akira said with a nod.

Goro sighed. “I highly doubt you'll be able to get Yoshizawa to agree to it, though.”

“No, I'm sure I can,” Akira said with a wave. “I'll just tell her this is the only way to get you to stop killing, to finish off the one who's giving you orders. I can convince her it's justified.” He paused to consider, then added, “Are you going to stop, after we kill Shido?”

Goro smiled wryly. “It's so strange to hear you say that so bluntly. I still can't believe this, honestly.” He sighed, then looked away, at the other end of the room. “I don't know. There were...reasons that I started. But everything's changed. ...I don't know.”

Arms folded, Akira looked down at the fallen king piece by his foot. What about him? Did he want to stop? If Goro was done with the other world, then what about him?

“Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Akira said, and reached out for his phone. “I'll call Sumire and talk to her about this. We need to get moving as soon as possible.”

“...Are you sure this is a good idea, Akira?”

“Why wouldn't it be? Our goals are aligned. You want Shido dealt with, I want to get deeper in the train station to find the Counselor. So we make it happen.”

“...I suppose you're right,” Goro said, but his face was still turned off toward the other end of the room, and Akira couldn't read the expression there.


	20. The Palace of Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very Plot and not very exciting, sorry. Just a lot of trivial details that need explaining before big things can happen. Next chapter is when Stuff happens.

It turned out Sumire was at gymnastics practice, but she did text back, and they arranged a time when the three of them could meet the next day.

Akira was eager to infiltrate Shido's palace, but he did have another important task. So that day, Akira decided to go to Leblanc.

The train ride there was so familiar, even the faces on the train seemed familiar—that middle school girl, that salaryman, that man in white with the glasses—Akira did a double-take, but the figure was gone. He rubbed his eyes. He was probably just tired.

Stepping in through the door of Leblanc, it _looked_ just as he remembered it, and Sojiro gave him a gruff “Welcome,” from behind the bar, addressing him like he would any customer.

Akira didn't expect to be remembered—it would be next to impossible for anyone who was not a Persona-user to remember the previous realities. He'd just come here to see what, if anything, was different, and, more importantly, to see if he could find Futaba—though this wasn't something he would say out loud, she was the most valuable of the Phantom Thieves. Without her, were going into combat blind. Even with Akira's knowledge of past worlds, the Councilor could easily be changing details here and there, and he didn't want to get stuck unawares.

But as soon as Akira was inside Leblanc, he was overwhelmed by a powerful sense of returning _home,_ and he found himself giving in, just for a moment.

He decided to order a coffee and curry.

Sitting at the booth seat as he waited for his order, he pulled out his phone and looked at his text history. He had, just in case, memorized the numbers of all the Phantom Thieves and his confidantes, but this time, it seemed the Counselor had foiled him again, as all of the numbers he had texted came back duds. Either they were unregistered numbers, or belonged to different people. Akira clicked his tongue, then looked up as Sojiro brought over his coffee and curry.

“Here, enjoy,” Sojiro said briefly, and turned around to go behind the bar again.

But Akira called, “Hey, what time do you close?”

“Six on Sundays,” Sojiro replied, tossing a bar cloth over one shoulder. “Eight on weekdays and Saturdays.”

“Going home early for a family dinner, huh?” Akira said, subtly probing.

“Well, not exactly.”

“Not a family man? Living on your own can get lonely, though.”

“Oh, I'm not on my own. Don't you worry about me, kid. Eat your curry.” Sojiro said, and he headed back behind the bar again.

So he wasn't alone, but he didn't have family dinners—that _seemed_ to imply that Futaba was with him, but she wasn't eating dinners with him, which meant she was back to being a hikkikomori.

Akira scooped up a spoonful of curry, pausing in his thoughts for a minute to savor it. This was always the same, too.

In most of the past realities, Futaba had not been a hikkikomori. Her mother had been alive, sometimes even married to Sojiro, and Futaba had lived with the two of them. The fact that she was back to what Akira seemed to remember as her original situation was baffling. This was one of those things that was most difficult for Akira to remember, but he thought that this was supposed to have been _fixed,_ just like all the worst things had been fixed—but then, thinking back, this life had had a lot of things go wrong. He thought perhaps he should count Kasumi's death there, but he generally remembered in every timeline that the original one had stayed dead, while Sumire had taken her place. Perhaps, Akira pondered, making Futaba a hikkikomori was just yet another tactic to make it harder for the group to get together again. Handicapping them by making it so their nav couldn't leave her bedroom was a smart move, after all.

Akira knew that, no matter what, the Counselor would not kill them. That was simply something he would not do. He would go to every length to save lives— _so then why did he let Goro and me kill targets?_

More unanswered questions that weren't getting him anywhere.

While pondering these matters, Akira lingered in Leblanc for a little longer than necessary, idly watching the variety show on the TV and Sojiro wiping down the bar as he finished his coffee and curry.

“Thanks,” Akira said as he stood from his seat. “The coffee and curry were both great.”

Sojiro looked up and nodded. “Come again.”

Leaving Leblanc was harder than he'd thought. But he didn't have the time to waste. He would get it back, in the end—that was what mattered.

Futaba would be simultaneously the easiest and also the hardest of the Thieves to recruit.

This time, Akira was not going to beat around the bush. After leaving Leblanc, he headed straight over to the Sakura residence. He did make a token attempt to knock, even knowing it wouldn't work—after waiting a few minutes at the door, he picked the lock on the front door, closed it behind him, and went down the hall to face Futaba's bedroom door.

It looked the same as always, and there was soft light leaking out from under the door. Inside the room was silent.

“Alibaba,” he said, “Or should I say Medjed?” He wasn't sure which she was using at this point in time. “I don't expect you to recognize me, and this is going to sound crazy, but I came here because I have information about your mother, Wakaba Isshiki, and about her research into cognitive psience. If you want to know more, then text me.” And he slid a slip of paper with his cell number and the name _Joker_ written on it under her door. He gave it to her assuming she was going to use it to hack his phone, but well, that was fine. It was Futaba. “I'll give you time to think about it, but I need your answer as soon as possible. I don't have much time.”

Akira didn't know how long it took for a new reality to settle in, he just knew the longer things stayed like this, the harder it would be for his friends to remember, the harder it would be to turn things back.

There was a niggling voice in the back of his mind that said, _maybe it's already too late,_ but he decided to ignore it.

There was no response from behind the door, but he knew she'd heard him. “Then I hope to hear from you soon, Futaba,” he said, and left the Sakura residence.

x x x

This was a profoundly awkward situation.

Sumire and Goro were sitting at Akira's coffee table, in front of the couch, each of them with cups of coffee and plates of curry in front of them. Akira sat opposite them with his own curry and coffee—he was just really having a hankering for that right now. Goro's expression betrayed nothing. Sumire seemed a little uncomfortable, and she wasn't looking at Goro. He wasn't looking at her, either.

Akira considered how best to broach the matter at hand.

...He just decided to say it.

Akira took a sip of his coffee. “Sumire, I want you to help us kill Goro's father.”

If Sumire had been drinking her coffee at that moment, she would certainly have spewed it in Akira's face, but Akira had carefully chosen a moment when she had nothing in her mouth to say that.

Goro sat silently and expressionlessly as Akira explained everything—about Shido, about the broad strokes of what he knew about their world, and his theory on why everyone was treating her as Kasumi, while Sumire's face grew progressively more grim.

When Akira was done talking, she looked down at her hands in her lap for a long while before saying, “I think I understand the situation. But is there really no other way?”

“No,” Akira lied, and he felt bad about this one—it was one thing to get his own hands dirty, but now he was dragging Sumire down with him, and she didn't deserve that. But this had to get done. “He's a murderer _(and he was quite aware of the hypocrisy of calling anyone else that)_ , and he'll keep going indefinitely unless we stop him.”

Sumire didn't respond right away, looking down at her hands on her lap, so Akira continued, “Haven't you had any strange dreams lately? Or memories that don't seem to fit?”

Sumire hesitated, but then she nodded slowly. “...Yes, I have. I've dreamed...about my sister's death. Ever since she died, I've been dreaming of it. It was so vague at first, I didn't understand. But it's different from what you told me happened. I see her getting hit by a car. I...” she raised one hand to her mouth, biting the nail of her thumb. “I don't understand it. But it feels so real.”

Akira leaned forward over the coffee table, excited. This was the first inkling of hope since he'd gotten back his own memories. He wasn't too late—not yet. “It _is_ real! _That's_ your real memories. You have to think about that more, keep digging into it, and you can remember everything.”

Sumire's eyebrows drew together, and she continued biting at her thumb nail. “I...I don't know...”

“I know it's painful,” Akira forced himself to calm, “But it's important that you do this. It's the key to fixing everything about your life. And I'll help you,” he said reassuringly, drawing a weak smile from her.

“...All right,” she said, and nodded.

“How about you?” Akira turned to Goro.

But he shook his head. “...No. I've never had any dreams or memories pop up, at all.”

Akira reached up to tug at his hair. He was back to this, after all. He just couldn't figure out what the trigger was for Goro's memories.

But well, they could work on that while also making other kinds of progress.

“Here,” he said, and he handed both Goro and Sumire a few pages that he'd written out by hand. The both of them picked them up and examined them.

“A list of names?” Goro asked. “Who are these?”

“People I want you to get in contact with,” Akira told them. “In the order I listed them there. You'll have to do a little bit of searching to find them, but I wrote some general tips there. I'm also going to be reaching out to people, but I need your help. All of these people can help us, given time to get to know them, and these people...” Akira pointed out the names of the other Phantom Thieves, “Are also persona users, though their memories and abilities are probably locked right now. I want all of us to be making contact with these people concurrently with exploring Shido's Palace.” He had also told them of Morgana's terminology here, though not Morgana himself—that was one complication Akira had no idea how to figure out. Where the hell was Morgana?

“Can I count on you to help me?” Akira asked the two of them, looking back and forth between them both.

“Well, I have no choice,” Goro said, setting down the papers by the side of the coffee table as he picked eyes on his food.

Akira nodded at him, and looked over to Sumire. Her expression was more complicated, but after a long moment, she nodded, too. “I don't like the idea of killing, but...this will stop more deaths in the end, right? And if we can turn back reality, and his death is undone, anyway...”

“Exactly,” Akira nodded back at her. “None of this is real, or will have permanent effects. So you don't have anything to feel guilty about.” Akira did not mention his fear that perhaps it was too late to turn the world back—he was scared that if he said it, he would be paralyzed forever. He needed to believe in their success.

Though frankly, he wouldn't regret offing Shido, either way.

“That's good then, right?” Sumire said, looking up from the coffee table. “Then that means all this time, you've never killed anyone.”

Akira opened his mouth, then closed it.

Maybe it was because he was too used to living without consequences, at this point.

Lying awake in bed the night before, Akira had tried to calculate the absolute value of time that he had lived out in the Counselor's various realities, with limited success. He figured it was years. And yet, no matter how closely he examined himself in the mirror, he still looked sixteen—definitively _younger_ than he had been in the past. He knew, because he was shorter. Was his body actually younger, or was his perception that warped? Would he wake up after all this was over and suddenly be twenty-two? Or older?

He didn't feel like a teenager.

With his memories of his past lives being so disorganized, Akira couldn't pin down the definitive moment when it had happened—the moment he'd started seeing this as a game.

Yes, it was a game. One with incredibly high stakes that Akira was dedicated to winning, but a game nevertheless. Sure, the Metaverse was unreal, but this world was ultimately more of the same, and every human was a shadow in a flesh skin, himself included. The whole of the world, with all its intricacies and flaws, was the playing field, and his friends were his friends, but they were also cards to be played. His body was an avatar, and his true self—well, he had hundreds of those, didn't he?

Maybe the seed of this belief had always been inside him, since the moment he had summoned Arsene. He'd always been a little too gleeful about exploring the Metaverse, a little too excited to find villains to take down, and with each victory, that arrogance had grown.

How could he not grow arrogant, after reaching the heights he had?

So he did not feel guilty. The only consequences that mattered to him were getting his friends back. The rest was just background details, world lore, an entry in the encyclopedia of the game.

At the very least, he had enough of a conscience left to hate this part of himself. He wanted to do the right thing, whatever that was.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod.

Goro looked at him with unreadable eyes.

x x x

When the three of them stepped onto Shido's Cruise of Pride, the first thing Akira noticed was that it was smaller than he remembered—still a cruise ship, but merely large instead of mammoth, sailing through a landscape that didn't seem quite so ruinous. The air smelled powerfully of salt.

“You've been in here before?” Akira asked Goro, who nodded.

“Yes, I've tried exploring here before, both for information, and seeking Shido's shadow,” he replied. “It's grown since I last came.”

“I wonder if there's a cognition of you here,” Sumire pondered. “You said that typically Palaces will have cognitions of the people that person knows, right?”

“Yes, that's right,” Goro said with a nod as they walked through the crowds of masked party-goers. “I'm sure there is one, somewhere, just as there were cognitions of me and Akira in your Palace.”

“There were?” Sumire blinked at him. “What were they like?”

Goro and Akira both went dead silent.

“What?” she said, looking to her right and then left, where each of the boys stood.

“Some things, you're better off not knowing,” Goro said dryly.

“Hey, do you think I can't handle it?” Sumire shot back, slightly huffy.

“If you can handle everything you've seen us do, you can handle anything,” Akira told her.

Goro's eye twitched. “Can we not talk about that?”

“What? Are you embarrassed she saw you suck off an oni?”

“Usually I'm not into having virginal voyeurs, no.”

“How do you know she's a virgin?”

“C-can we not discuss my virginity?!” Sumire covered her face with her hands—a rather silly sight when she was already wearing a mask.

“See?” Goro said with a smug grin. “Told you.”

“There's nothing wrong with being a virgin,” Akira told her gently, which made Goro roll his eyes.

“Yes, generally, men are into that sort of blushing innocence,” he said with a nasty edge to his tone.

“Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her,” Akira shot back, totally non-seriously.

“Oh, do you think, Akira-senpai?” Goro said in sweet tone with a bright smile. “Aha, oh, I do agree that it's best to share such intimate moments with someone special.”

“Aw, you think I'm someone special?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Goro reverted to his usual derision.

“Is that a proposition? But Sumire is right there, and I thought you weren't into voyeurs.”

“Um!” Sumire said, a wide blush on her face, “Maybe we should talk to some of these shadows! A-about things! To get information!”

They decided to focus on making their way through the Palace.

x x x

Earlier that week, Akira had passed through Kichijoji, where Sumire's Palace had been, and found nothing—of course. It would have disappeared once she manifested a Persona.

He had spent the rest of his free time going around to see the Phantom Thieves. He rode that old familiar train with the old familiar faces, that middle school girl, that salaryman, that man in white with the glasses—

He went to Shujin and found Ryuji, Ann, Haru and Makoto, all going about their lives as normal. Kamoshida was still at the school too, and he seemed the same as Akira remembered him. Ryuji and Ann knew each other, but the others acted as if they'd basically never interacted before. He'd also gone to Kosei to check up on Yusuke. Things _seemed_ to be just as they had been before Akira had first come to Tokyo, but it wasn't like he'd interrogated everyone thoroughly, so he couldn't say for sure.

Even a few days after he'd left that note at the Sakura residence, he still hadn't received a reply from Futaba, and he was getting antsy. What would he do if she refused to talk to him? Was she just anxious? Or had the Counselor done something to impede their communication? Should he go back? Would he make it worse if he just barged in on her? He hadn't even thought to consider if she had a Palace at this point, but the thought of stealing her heart when she hadn't yet asked for it made him sick.

What if he just dragged her into her own palace and forced her to confront her cognition of her mother? If anything would trigger her memories, that would.

Ryuji had treated him like a stranger, predictably. Akira had approached him, asking if he'd had any strange dreams or out-of-place memories, pressing him to think about Kamoshida, about his parents, about the other guys on the track team, where it seemed Ryuji was still a member. Ryuji had basically reacted like, “Whoa dude, I don't know who you are, but uh, I've gotta go over there now.” Ann had reacted in much the same way, like, “Um, that's kind of a weird way to hit on a girl,” before swiftly walking in the other direction.

If Ryuji and Ann didn't remember anything, then they wouldn't be able to access their personas, either. This had to be a tactic to seal away their powers.

Over the course of a few days, Akira had approached each of his friends, but all of them had reacted in much the same way. Makoto had been openly suspicious of him and had questioned his presence on Shujin school grounds. Haru had been more friendly, but she'd shut down once he mentioned her father. Yusuke had completely ignored him.

This was so much harder than it had been before.

x x x

Akira took to sleeping over at Goro's apartment, most nights.

“Not gonna snap at me to go home?” Akira teased him, lying back in Goro's bed in a pair of pyjama pants he'd purloined from Goro. They were quite conveniently about the same size.

“When has that ever worked?” Goro said as he shrugged into his own pyjamas before dropping onto the bed himself, pulling the blankets over himself. As soon as he was under the covers, Akira switched off the bedside lamp, then glomped him, drawing Goro's back toward his chest and squirming his hands underneath Goro's pyjama shirt.

“Are you sure it's not just because you're horny for the D?” Akira said against Goro's neck as his right hand sneaked under Goro's waistband.

“ _You're_ horny for the D,” Goro shot back, but he sounded a little breathless, despite having already fucked once that night.

Fingers tracing over a particularly large scar that ran down Goro's stomach and over his pelvic bone, Akira asked the question that had been on his mind for quite some time. “How did you get this one?”

Goro was silent for a moment, and Akira worried he wouldn't reply, but then he sighed. “The truth is, I don't remember.”

“You don't remember? At all?”

“I really don't. I don't remember where I got most of my scars. I assume I got them in the Metaverse, but I just clean don't remember.” He paused, and in the silence, Akira just ran his fingers slowly in circles over his stomach. “I did some research on it, and I always figured it was PTSD or something. My memory...has a lot of holes, to be honest. But hearing you talk, and knowing now everything that's happened with Yoshizawa...I wonder if my memories have been manipulated.” He chuckled. “It seems so insane, but well, if I'm going to accept Personas and the Metaverse, why not everything else?”

Akira certainly couldn't rule out manipulation. “I remember originally, you had a lot of scars, but you never told me where they came from. Every other life I remember erased them all, though. The Counselor...always wanted to make everything better. ...He changed you a lot.”

“Changed me how?”

“Well, he made you happy.”

“Absolutely horrifying.”

“Right?” Akira chuckled into his neck. “But no matter how bad the memories are, you'd want to remember them, right? You'd want to know.”

“Of course,” Goro scoffed. “I don't need to be _protected._ And the idea that some godlike individual is manipulating my head from afar is absolutely sickening.”

A very Goro-like answer, and it made Akira smile.

Akira was silent for a while, but his mind was far from sleep. “You still awake?”

“What?”

“...When this is all over, let's watch the new _Featherman_ together.”

Goro yawned. “Oh, the series that's based on the old Super Famicom game? Yeah, sure... I'm sure it won't be as good as the original, though...”

“Then it's a promise. No backing out.”

“Yeah, yeah...” Goro muttered, and fell asleep.

x x x

Akira woke with a jolt to the sound of Goro screaming.

Akira leaned over to flip on the light, then leaned toward him.

Goro was sitting straight up in bed, staring ahead into space as if he was somewhere else. His pyjama shirt was drenched with sweat, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

This wasn't the first time Akira had witnessed this.

“What did you dream?” Akira pressed him, taking one of his hands and stroking the back of his palm.

But Goro didn't answer him, still looking straight into air. The only sound he made was a choked sob. His pupils were wandering around as if seeking a target, and his shoulders were heaving as if he'd been running.

“Let me help you remember,” Akira told him.

“I don't want to remember,” Goro replied in a thin, raspy voice, and then he immediately collapsed back on the bed, asleep.

Akira knew he wouldn't remember this in the morning.

Looking down on his sleeping form, Akira fought down his rising anger.

The Counselor was certainly doing this to protect him. And this was happening because while Goro said when he was awake that he wanted his memories, when actually confronted with them, some corner of his heart rejected it.

Akira slid out of the bed, switched off the light again, and left the bedroom to go stalk around the apartment. He wasn't going to get to sleep that night.

He found he'd left the kitchen light on. Wandering into the kitchen, he noticed a crack in one of the lower cupboards. He wondered how it had gotten there—the rest of this place looked so new.

“ _Someone so much more pathetic, foolish and weak than you know.”_

That wasn't true, though, was it? Goro was strong. He would choose to remember, eventually. Akira just had to stay with him, to keep on trying.

Akira wasn't going to be alone in this.

Gripping the edge of the sink, Akira leaned his forehead against the cupboard, closed his eyes, and tried to make himself believe that he was going to win, in the end.


	21. Fate of the Blind

Since Goro already knew his way around the place, they made their way around quickly, and with some questioning, they managed to discover that they needed letters from five key figures in order to proceed. This had been Goro's bottleneck before—all those people knew of him and had refused to cooperate with him. With Akira and Sumire, however, and some smooth lying and wheedling, they managed to get what they wanted out of the shadows.

When it came to fighting, Sumire was lacking, compared to Akira and Goro, but she was athletic and a quick learner, and she was catching up. More importantly, she seemed to be regaining fragments of memory, though extremely slowly. Akira had to believe that if she was remembering, then the others would too.

He still hadn't heard back from Futaba. But he couldn't afford to wait for her. They would have to manage without her help.

Exploring the corridors of Shido's ship brought back memories, and now that he was actually walking through this place, Akira realized that he'd only been through here _once_ before, not multiple times. Despite having gone through many lives, he got the feeling that this was the only time they had gone... _back._ Back to before the defeat of The Fool, and Akira _still_ could not parse out the true name of that creature, or god, from his memory.

Akira remembered the Councilor having sent them into fake Palaces full of fake enemies, purely for the purpose of distracting them from the real goal. He couldn't even say for sure that this wasn't more of the same.

...But there was no point in thinking about that now. If he started doubting every single aspect of reality, it would never end.

Finally, they reached the double doors that lead to the hall where it seemed the Shadow Shido had to be.

“Are you ready?” Akira turned back to ask his companions.

Sumire gave him a determined nod, and Goro said, “Of course I'm ready,” but Akira wasn't so sure. He had this nameless feeling of unease, but he couldn't put his finger on why.

“Are you sure?” Akira asked him. “You haven't seen what Shadow Shido is like before, have you?”

Goro snorted, folding his arms. “I already know what he's like. He's a megalomaniac bastard, that's it. There's nothing he could say that would surprise me.” His lips quirked into a smirk. “Don't think it's going to shock me.”

Akira nodded back at him. He trusted Goro to know himself. “All right then,” he said. “Just remember to stick to the plan.” Then he pushed open the doors.

x x x

The emptiness of the Diet Hall was eerie, but they weren't made to wait long.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Shido said, walking out to the podium at the front. He looked entirely normal—just a man in a suit, except his eyes were glowing yellow behind his tinted sunglasses. “I've been wanting to see you.”

“Well then, you know what's coming,” Akira said with a toothy grin, drawing his blade.

Shadow Shido grinned right back at him. “Confidence is good, kid, but you need to know your limits.” Folding his arms, he turned toward Goro. “Betraying me, after all I've done for you? You'd be on the streets if not for me.”

“Don't you _dare_ act like I should be _grateful_ to you,” Goro spat, reaching for his serrated sword as well. “If you hadn't—”

“Left your mother?” Shido cut him off, and seeing Goro's expression of shock, his smirk widened. “Oh, I knew all about that. You look so much like her, it was obvious. I figured you were plotting revenge or something like that.”

The shock melted off Goro's face, only to be replaced by something else that seemed caught between anger and desperation as he demanded, “Then why?! Why keep me around if you knew what I was doing?!”

Shido just chuckled, shaking his head. “You're about a hundred years to early to be playing games with me, Akechi. Oh, don't get me wrong—I actually think quite highly of you, you know. You're smart, ambitious, ruthless, and a great liar—a real chip off the old block.”

Sensing Goro's rising anger, Akira clapped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tight—he meant it as a comfort, but also as a restraint. “Don't let him bait you,” he warned.

But Goro wasn't listening, wrenching out of Akira's grasp. “Fuck you!” he yelled back. “I'm nothing like you, you sick megalomaniac!”

“Nothing like me?” Shido said, his attitude bemused. “You can't be _that_ lacking in self-awareness. I've seen your little rampage through this place. You're as much of a sadist as I am, and a user, too, roping in these people to help you in your revenge plot, manipulating their affection for you. You've learned the lessons I taught you better than anyone else ever has.”

Akira grabbed both Goro's shoulders before he could lunge forward, wrenching him back, wrestling with his arms to keep him from jumping ahead mindlessly. “Don't listen to him,” Akira hissed in his ear. “Stick with the plan, we're going to—”

“But you've outlived your usefulness,” Shadow Shido said, dropping his arms to his sides as he stepped down from the podium, leisurely walking toward them. “Don't take it personally, my boy, I'm just cutting liabilities.” Then he turned to Akira, behind the struggling Goro, still restraining him. “ _You,_ on the other hand. I can see you have more potential. How about you take his place?”

“Like hell he'll take your offer, fuck you!” Akechi spat.

Shido sighed. “See, this is my problem with you—you're so clearly unstable, no matter how you try to hide it. That's why I dropped your mother too, you know. She would get emotional over every little thing. I'd thought you might be a little better, but it seems not.” He turned back to Akira. “ _You,_ though—” His mouth split into a wide grin. “How about it? I figure you could do a better job than _him_.”

Goro screamed, shoving Akira away, black ooze dripping down his body as he charged straight for Shadow Shido, sword raised in a high stance. Shadow Shido just stood there with a smirk on his face that was _so_ uncomfortably familiar—there was a flash, and then the shadow before them was wearing a helmet and grotesque war regalia, and an instant later, fire was raining down around them.

The battle was a disaster.

Goro was completely out of control, lost in a level of madness that Akira had never seen in him before, and Sumire was overwhelmed, barely able to just dodge and keep herself in one piece as Shadow Shido filled the whole hall with firestorm, then ice blasts, then a violent gale—and Shido was casting darkness spells specifically to target her again and again, getting her where she was weakest.

Everything felt off. It was different from what he remembered. He thought he'd known how Shido fought, and this wasn't it. He seemed—stronger that he remembered. A lot stronger. And Akira had the gut feeling that more was coming, too.

He shouldn't have come in here without Futaba.

When Shadow Shido transformed into a lion-like creature with a man riding his back, Akira sensed that it was going to get worse. Shido raised his hands, and Akira quickly reached a decision. “Goro! Sumire! Retreat!”

That instant, a pounding hail of rocks descended on all of them, a completely unfamiliar attack summoned by the shadow. Akira cast defensive spells on all of them, but it wasn't enough. Sumire knelt behind Cendrillon, the persona defending her from the assault. Even if she wanted to run, she couldn't.

“You go!” Goro yelled back at him as he struck rocks aside with his blade, pushing forward with Loki as his shield. “I'm not leaving until he's dead!”

“You're going to get killed!” Akira yelled back. He dashed through the boulder rain under his persona's barrier to Goro's side, grabbing his arm.

Goro looked back at him with wild, red eyes flaring from underneath his mask, his teeth clenched in an expression of mad desperation. “I don't care.”

And then Goro ripped out of his grasp, charging ahead, with eyes for nothing but Shido.

The rocks came down even harder, like black hail, nearly blacking out Akira's vision as he continuously cast spells healing Goro and Sumire, and he only got flashes of what was going on around him.

Sumire, on her knees as she struggled to defend herself against the onslaught coming from above. She was being pummeled with rocks, Cendrillon unable to defend her against everything, her costume torn and dirtied with blood, pinned to the spot and unable to move.

Goro, letting himself get hit so he could get one good strike at Shido with Loki's glowing blade.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he just barely caught sight of the silver flash of a gun and a face that was familiar—except had glowing yellow eyes.

He'd thought it was strange that they'd never run into a cognition of Akechi.

“Sumire!” Akira yelled, and she looked up from where she was kneeling. She saw where Akira was looking, but if she moved, she would be crushed under the rain of rocks coming down around her.

Akira didn't think. When the Cognitive Akechi fired, he cast a shield to repel the bullet away from her.

But in the moment he was occupied defending her, his attention was away from their opponent. Out of the corner of his eye, Akira saw Shadow Shido raise one hand, and a blinding light filled Akira's vision.

And then, nothing more.

x x x

Sumire was far enough away from Akira that all she could do was reach out and scream, but close enough that she saw the fragments of his flesh separate into a hundred pieces and evaporate as the Megidolaon hit him. Akechi wasn't even looking, his attention laser-focused on Shido and nothing else.

Everything hit Sumire all at once.

She knew what it felt like to watch someone die in front of her eyes. She'd seen it, she'd seen it a hundred times, she'd felt it in her being.

“ _Akechi-senpai! We have to run!_ ” she screamed, but he wasn't listening, he couldn't even hear her, throwing himself at the enemy as Shadow Shido simply toyed with him.

She was beyond thoughts. The moment the stone hail stopped, Ella came to her, exploding out of her with agony and a splatter of blood from her face, dancing through the air to grab Akechi by his belts and drag him away in her arms.

Sumire turned around and ran.

She could hear Loki's shrieking roar behind her, but Ella was faster. Sumire felt every scrape of his claws on Ella's skin on her own flesh, but she just ran, Shadow Shido's bolts of lightning hitting the ground behind her as she fled. Ella passed her by, Akechi clasped tight in her arms, and they raced through halls and down corridors, the sounds of Shadow Shido's laughter echoing in her ears behind them, until she reached the safe room—Sumire kicked open the door, Ella flung Akechi in, and Sumire followed, immediately slamming the door behind herself and putting her back against the door to keep him from leaving.

Sumire wasn't sure what she thought she'd expected, but it wasn't Akechi's claw hitting the door beside her head, crunching through the wood. His other claw grabbed her collar, yanking her back, but Sumire raised up one leg to kick him away, making him stumble back into the table behind him.

“Akechi-senpai! Snap out of it!” She braced her back against the door, ready to stand firm where she was. She felt a well of strength she'd never known she had enabling her to stay on her feet, to hold her ground against Akechi.

“Get out of my _way!_ ” He lunged at her again, this time coming at her with a closed fist aiming for the gut, but she kicked him back again, harder this time—she didn't want to hurt him, but if she had to do it, she had to do it. It was better than him going out there to die.

“No! Listen to me! Akira-senpai is _dead!_ And if you go back out there, you're going to die, too!”

“That's none of your damned business!” Akechi went for her again—his eyes were still glowing mad red, his mouth in a feral snarl, and this time, he was aiming for her neck—she grabbed the doorframe above and brought up both legs to kick him hard in the gut, knocking him down to gasp on the floor.

“Did you hear me?!” Sumire yelled at him. “Senpai is _dead._ Did you—did you even _notice_ , or were you so busy being obsessed with—”

Akechi gasped a minute, curling around his stomach, before he had enough air to wheeze, “Of course I fucking _noticed._ ” He pushed himself to his feet, and Sumire realized now that he had left a mess of red stains on the floor when he'd fallen. She hadn't noticed immediately because of the dark colors of his costume, but his black sleeves were shredded, and a dark pool was spreading around his torso. A drop of blood dripped from one claw—and it seemed like it was his own. “He's dead because of _you!_ ”

And then his palm hit her in the neck, stunning her, and he was ripping her away from the door by the neck, opening the knob—but Sumire flung herself at his back, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He tried to shake her off, reaching back to cut her with his claws, but she gritted her teeth and took it.

“Let me _go!_ I'm going to kill him!”

“You're going to _die!_ I won't let you!”

“Don't fucking pretend you care!”

“I'm not _pretending,_ just _listen—_ ”

Akechi finally dumped her on the ground, but Sumire grabbed his leg and yanked, dragging him to the floor with her.

“You can't win alone! You're injured too badly!” she tried to reason with him.

But Akechi was beyond reason. “I don't fucking _care,_ _let me die!_ ” He kicked her in the face, and Sumire heard this weird crunch that was very close. She brought her hands to her face, and they came away with blood.

Akechi scrabbled to his feet, opening the door, but Sumire launched herself at him again, wrapping her arms around his legs. “You can cut me and kick me and hit me, but I'm not letting you go! I'm not going to watch anyone else die!” She wasn't sure if the liquid she felt running down her face was blood, or tears, or both. “If you want to leave this room, you're going to have to kill me!”

Sumire braced herself for another kick, but it never came. She just heard a thump as Akechi slumped against the door, and then the sound of his labored breathing.

When he stopped struggling, Sumire loosened her arms slightly and looked up at him. His legs were trembling with exhaustion, and a line of blood was seeping out the back of his costume to trail down the door.

Then he crumpled to the ground without a word.

x x x

Sumire immediately cast Diarahan on him, but it didn't seem to be enough—she remembered what she'd seen Akira do and cut open Akechi's costume to target the wound in his side directly, pressing her hands against the flesh. It seemed to help, but he didn't wake up.

She fumbled around in his pockets until she pulled out the Bag of Holding she knew he had there, shuffling through their items, trying to figure out what the heck she could use to help him. Akira had explained a lot of them to her, but caught in a moment of panic, she wasn't sure of anything anymore, fumbling with bottles and jars and dumping the contents of one into the back of his throat, then going for another as well.

Finally, he came to, coughing on the bitter liquid she'd made him swallow as he heaved himself into a sitting position.

“Akechi-senpai. Are you okay?” Looking into his eyes through his mask, she saw their color had dimmed, the effects of Loki's rage gone.

He seemed disoriented for a moment, blinking at her. “Akira?” But then his eyes focused, and he saw who was in front of him. His expression twisted, and he shoved her. Sumire landed on her bottom about a meter away.

Akechi's masked head dropped, and he looked down at the floor.

He didn't say anything.

Sumire didn't say anything.

After a long, suffocating silence, Sumire said, “A-Akechi-senpai, remember that list of people he gave us? He said those people could help us, and some were persona-users. If we could make contact with them, get help a-and—”

“Why?” Akechi raised his head to give her a dead-eyed glare. “So you can drag them into this and get them killed too?”

“I...” Sumire couldn't speak anymore. She could feel her lips trembling, wetness on her face.

“Oh yeah, go and cry again, that'll sure help,” Akechi spat. “Maybe if you weren't such a snivelling weakling, we would have fucking _won!_ ” he raised one claw and smacked it into the ground, digging into the wooden boards beside him. “Why the hell did he always have to baby you like that?! He was _always_ sweet on you, he was _always_ ready to protect _you!_ Fat fucking lot of good it did! He should have let you get shot!”

“Ah...” Sumire trembled, and she couldn't argue with anything he was saying. He was right. He was completely right, about everything.

“Why the hell did he have to protect _you?!_ ” Akechi snarled, claws dug deep into the wood, pulling up splinters and shavings as he glared death at her.

“I know!” Sumire cried, covering her face with her hands. She couldn't bear to look at him anymore, knowing what she'd done to him, what Akira had meant to him. “I know!” she sobbed. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

“Who asked for a fucking _apology?!_ ” Akechi smacked the floor with one claw, sending a splinter flying into the air.

“I know, I'm sorry,” Sumire babbled on, hiding her face in her hands. “I should have been the one to die. I should have—”

“Shut _up!”_ Akechi shook his head.

“But then you two could—”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Akechi wrapped his arms around himself, and Sumire could see through her tears that he was shaking. His eyes under his helmet squeezed shut, and his claws dug into his arms as if he were using everything he had to hold something in.

“Akechi-senpai—”

“Stop _talking_ to me,” he choked out, claws digging deeper, tearing through his sleeves to draw blood from his arms.

Sumire crawled forward toward him—she wasn't sure if she was trying to comfort him, or looking to be comforted, but when she tried to embrace him, he shoved her away.

“I don't want your pity,” he spat, his face close enough that Sumire could see the clear lines of tear tracks down his cheeks.

“Akechi-senpai...”

“Don't _look_ at me like that!” His hands came to his head, claws scraping over the sides of his helmet as he hunched over his lap. “Stop looking at me, stop talking to me! Just fuck off!”

His words didn't have much bite when they were choked out between sobs, though.

Sumire could do nothing but sit there and watch him cry. Akechi sobbed loudly, then before he was even done, stood up and screamed, picked up one of the chairs at the table and threw it at the wall. He kicked over the table, tore into the seat cushions with his claws, went over to the bed to rip off the sheets and pillows, then heaved the mattress off too, smashing the pictures on the walls, destroying every single item the room that could be destroyed. Sumire could do nothing but watch, drawing her knees into her chest as she let her tears flow silently.

When Akechi was done laying waste to the whole safe room, he dropped to his knees, and said nothing more.

Akira would have known what to do with him. Akira could have offered him comfort that he would accept. It was Sumire who was the problem. She'd always been the problem.

She'd gone in wanting Akira to be her prince, but she had never been worthy of being a princess. And now look what had happened.

If only she could do what Akira would have done. He always knew how to talk to people, had the right thing to say. He was strong in every situation.

If only—

x x x

Somehow, they dragged themselves out of Shido's Palace. Akechi didn't say a single word after that, and Sumire didn't know where he went after they left.

If he was going to kill himself like he wanted to, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

When she got home, she ignored her mother's greeting of “Welcome home, Kasumi,” went straight up to her room and dropped into bed.

She dreamed.

x x x

She was in a blue prison.

She recalled having had dreams like these before, many times, in fact, since Kasumi's death, but they'd always been so hazy and vague, and she hadn't been able to do anything except sit there and look around. Now, somehow, she could stand up, examine the place.

Approaching the bars of her cell, she peered out—and when she touched the bars, she realized they weren't locked, and the door swung open with a creak.

Stepping out of the cell, she looked around.

She was in a circular room. There was a desk in the middle scattered with blue cards. There were two other cells in the room, empty, their doors open.

“Hello?” she called, walking around the desk. She had a passing familiarity with Tarot, and recognized some of the cards lying face-up there.

 _Justice_ and _Faith,_ side-by-side, with the _Counselor_ above them.

She looked on the floor to see a card fallen on the ground at her feet. She knelt down and picked it up. _The Fool._ It was warm in her hand.

“Hey! Inmate!”

She dropped the card, head snapping around to see a pair of little blond girls in jailer uniforms and eye patches marching up the stairs, one swinging her baton as she went.

“What are you doing out of your cell? Get back in there!” The one with the baton barked, and the two girls forcibly shoved Sumire back inside the cell, locking the door after her.

“Why am I in here?” she asked them, and the girl with the buns smacked her baton against the bars, making Sumire jump.

“Prisoners don't need to ask questions!” she barked. “Obviously, you're in there because you did something bad!”

“I...” Sumire trailed off. Yes, she had done something bad. Something awful and beyond forgiveness. But now that she was back inside her cell and the door was locked, those memories were swiftly fading away, being replaced with something else. “What are you going to do to me?”

“That depends on what our master has to say,” the girl with the clipboard said in a voice softer than her twin. “He'll be here soon.”

Sumire heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and then a man appeared.

She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn't this. He was wearing all-white, with his hair slicked back—something about him reminded her of a doctor.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose as he approached the desk in the middle of the prison. Looking at the floor around the desk, he noticed all the cards scattered there and crouched down, picking them up one by one and gathering the deck into his hands. It wasn't very dignified.

When he was finally done, he tapped the cards against the deck to even them out and placed them carefully in the middle of the desk. “This place looks rather miserable,” he said, looking all around. “Well, though that was his cognition, wasn't it? It should be different for you—unless you and he have similar feelings.” He looked straight at Sumire with gentle eyes.

“I-I don't know what you mean...” she said, leaning forward, wrapping her hands around the bars. “Can't you let me out? Why am I here? What is this place?”

“Ah, about that.” the man nodded, then leaned back against the desk behind him, drawing a card from the deck there and toying with it. “I'm afraid I can't let you leave. It would have done a lot of damage if you'd gotten out like the other two did. Now one's dead, for now, and the other...” He sighed. “Hopefully, he's still rejecting his memories. I worked so hard to protect him from them...” He brought one hand to his temple as if restraining a headache. “At least I still have all the rest here, safe. And I have you.” He gave her a warm smile. Then he circled around behind the desk, took a seat, set the card he'd pulled out back in the deck, then fanned out the Tarot cards in front of him.

“This is a place between mind and matter,” the man said as if he were reciting it, “dreams and reality. Take your time to slowly understand this place. I am simply here to help you on your journey.” He drew a card— _The Counselor—_ and it flashed in his hands, then disappeared. “You won't be needing that one,” he said, then drew another card— _The Fool—_ and turned it to face her. “Anyone can have the potential, given the right circumstances, the right mindset. How about it? Wouldn't you like to try on some other masks, to be someone else?”

“Sign this, Inmate,” the girl with the clipboard said, shoving it through the bars at Sumire.

It was a contract. In the dream, she couldn't quite read what it said.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Simply an agreement,” the man in white said with a nod, folding his fingers in front of his face as he leaned his elbows on the desk. “A pledge that you open the way for me, to guide humanity forward into the present. And when it's done, you and all your friends will have whatever life you want. I can even bring back those you've lost, if you like.”

“Sign it, Inmate!” the girl with the buns smacked her buns against the bars. “You have no right to refuse!”

“Come on now, Caroline,” the man in white said with a smile. “No need to be so harsh. I'd like her to come to her own conclusion.”

Caroline reluctantly backed away from the bars, and Sumire looked down at the contract.

“Will you let me out if I sign this?”

“That's up to you and your efforts,” the calmer little girl said with a smile.

“All right then...” It felt like she was signing her life away, but she had no choice. Sumire signed and returned the clipboard through the bars to her twin jailers.

“Excellent,” the man in white said, leaning back in his chair with a smile. “You can call me _Counselor._ ” And lifting _The Fool,_ he laid it down on the desk, facing towards her. “Welcome to the Velvet Room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand that's the end of part one. :3 Akira will be back, don't worry, don't worry... He's dying for the plot but also coming back for the plot. 
> 
> Remember how I said "I hope this won't be longer than 120,000 words, yeah, it's gonna be longer than that. Nghhhh at least 50k more. This monster of a fic is going to kill me...


	22. PART TWO: The Fool, Reversed

“Are you listening to me?” Akechi stalked after Akira through the door of Leblanc, the cafe dimmed after closing.

“I heard you,” Akira replied calmly as he walked to the back and up the stairs, and Akechi followed. “I just disagree.”

“You can _disagree_ all you want, but your pointless showboating just about got us killed,” Akechi snapped at him. “And that was _in the real world._ It's not like in the Metaverse. There are _consequences._ ”

Dropping his bag on the floor of his room, Akira spun around to face him. “My _pointless showboating_ is what draws people to our website to make requests.”

“ _Your_ website,” Akechi shot back through gritted teeth.

“We're a team now, aren't we?” Akira grinned back at him. “The Phantom Thieves, stealing hearts and righting evil: you, me, Sumire, Haru, Makoto, Ann—”

“Yes, me, and then you and your love dodecahedron,” Akechi said with a snide roll of his eyes.

“...You jealous?”

Akechi froze for a moment there, but he covered it well. “Always looking for additions to your harem, huh?”

“Talking like you're not already in it,” Akira said with a smirk, and Akechi took a swing at him, but Akira dodged with a laugh, letting Akechi grab him by the blazer and shove him back toward the bed to clamber on top of him and straddle him. Akechi always did love this position.

“Can you take _anything_ seriously?” Akechi snapped at him, but Akira just grabbed his hips and rolled up into his ass, drawing a faint sound from the back of Akechi's throat.

“If you wanted to have a serious conversation, you wouldn't be sitting on my dick.”

Akechi's only response was a snarl, and then they were both tossing off their clothes as quickly as possible, distracted from the task only by their hands on each other—Akechi only had his pants off and his dress shirt half-unbuttoned by the time Akira was slicked up and thrusting up into him.

Akechi threw his head back and rode Akira's cock with vicious pleasure, shoving Akira's turtleneck up to his armpits and then grabbing it like a life raft when Akira's pace began to accelerate.

“Kurusu,” Akechi gasped when Akira's thrust hit particularly deep, back arching as he rocked into it.

“Fucking call me Akira already,” Akira growled at him, squeezing Akechi's hips hard enough he knew there would be bruises after—he wanted there to be bruises. “You saved my life and you still won't call me by my first name?”

“We're not—”

Akira bowled them over, pinning Akechi against the bed with his hips flush against Akechi's ass, getting as deep as he could, as close as he could. “We _are._ ”

Akechi's eyes closed a moment. “You're so—”

But Akira cut him off with a kiss, diving into his mouth to inhale every part of Akechi he could, and Akechi wrapped his arms around Akira's neck, meeting Akira with equal intensity.

“When are you going to stop pretending this is just sex?” Akira murmured in his ear when they broke the kiss. “Just admit you were worried about me.”

Akechi shoved him away with a hand against his face, lips curled in disgust. “Can you get any more arrogant? I'm just questioning your ability to follow ord— _ahh!_ ” He was cut off, head falling back against the pillow, when Akira sank deep into him, reaching around to grab his neglected cock and squeeze.

“What was that you were saying?” Akira looked down at him with a smug grin. “Say your piece, I'm listening.”

“I was s- _saying_... _ah..._ that you... _hnn..._ ” Akira set a slow, languorous pace, stroking Akechi's leaking cock with gentle fingers, but that was enough to derail his complaints entirely, and then he seemed to give up, finishing with, “...Oh, f-fuck you.”

“Tell me you love me, or I'm not letting you cum.” Akira leaned over to the side table to get some extra lube to slick over his fingers, slathering it all over Akechi's cock to work him slowly, sliding his thumb down over his balls to feel how close he was. The way his ass was clenching around Akira's cock, he was pretty damn close. “How long has it been since you beat off? You look like you want to cum pretty bad,” he said, teasing.

“Is this your...fucking kink?” Akechi squirmed against the pillow, his fingers curling in the bars above his head as he panted and bucked his hips into Akira's grasp. He was flushed already, but Akira could swear he was getting redder.

“If you don't want to cum, we can just stay here all night,” Akira said. He wasn't moving anymore, just staying inside Akechi, feeling his heat as he slowly ran Akechi's dick through his fist. Then with two, strokes, three, brought Akechi right up to the edge, arching off the bed, only to drop him and leave him there. Akechi made a grab for his own cock, trying to finish himself, but Akira pinned his hands at his sides, just watching him gasp and want it.

“You can't last all night,” Akechi said with his classic cocky smirk, and that was just what Akira wanted to hear.

“Wanna bet?” Akira gave Akechi's dick a little slap, letting him cool for a bit, before picking him up again and stroking at a maddeningly slow pace.

“You really get off on the... _hnn..._ control, huh?” Akechi gasped out after Akira denied him an orgasm the second time. “You just want to know...you can make me do anything you want?”

Akira frowned at him, his hand stilling on Akechi's cock. “Is that what you think?”

“It's pretty damn obvious. You're not special. The world is overflowing with men like that,” he said bitterly.

“Why do you have to be like that,” Akira muttered, leaning down to kiss the side of Akechi's neck, trailing downward, making slow, gentle marks toward the middle of his chest. “I just want to play with you. I want to make you feel good. ...Even if you won't admit it, I know you love me.”

“...So fucking arrogant,” Akechi muttered, but his hands were curling in Akira's hair, drawing him into a kiss, this time, slow and gentle, as Akira started moving inside Akechi again.

“I love you,” Akira murmured into Akechi's hair, mouthing his neck, as he took one of Akechi's hands in his clean one and interlaced their fingers, the other sliding down resume jerking his dick slowly. “Goro.”

“Don't,” Akechi said, his voice weak as a whimper. “Don't make promises.”

“I will,” Akira buried his face against Akechi's neck as he thrust deep, rocking into him with increasing fervor. “We're going to be together forever. Us. The heroes Crow and Joker.”

“Don't,” Akechi said again, but his hands were around Akira's back, gripping onto his turtleneck and holding him close.

“I love you.”

Akechi's hole tightened around him, and then he was chanting Akira's name as he came, hips rising to meet Akira's cock as Akira fucked him through it, feeling Akechi's sticky cum rubbing between their bodies, and at some point when they were kissing, Akira felt wetness on his cheeks and realized Akechi was crying.

“If you die...I'll fucking kill you again,” he croaked. “I love you, you asshole, is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Mmm, good boy,” Akira said, and yelped when Akechi reached out and twisted his nipple in retaliation.

“I regret saying that,” Akechi dropped his head back with an eye roll.

“C'mon, you'll get fucked good as a reward,” Akira drew back, licking his lips as he took Akechi's thighs in his grasp, pushing his hips up higher. “I'd call that a win-win.”

Akechi smiled at him then, the most genuine smile Akira had ever seen, and then—

Akira woke up.

x x x

Akira jolted up in bed, painfully hard in his pajamas. The room was dark.

When he reached under the elastic waistband to touch himself, the memories of Akechi's warmth still fresh in his mind, he finished in a matter of seconds, then grabbed his pillow in his other hand and pressed it to his face until the urge to cry passed. It was a long wait.

He remembered so painfully vividly what had come after that.

x x x

“I can't believe it took you this long to snap out of it, Kurusu.” Akechi was standing over him, arms crossed, as Akira lay sprawled back on the mucky ground of Mementos, trying to bring his scattered memories together. “Even Okumura started piecing it together weeks ago, and I already made contact with the other Phantom Thieves who were separated from us. I never would have thought you'd be the last one to wake up from this reality.”

“...Yeah.” Staring up at the darkness near the ceiling, Akira thought back on the previous times—usually, he and Akechi had remembered at around the same time, or within a week of each other.

“Were you that enamored with this iteration?” Akechi said, offering Akira a hand to get up, which Akira took. “Living out your little heroic fantasy while also fucking a whole harem?” He snorted in disgust. “Looks like Maruki sure got your number.”

Akira wanted to scowl at him, but he covered it with a smirk instead as he dusted off his coat. “It's not like this is the first iteration where I've slept around. It was just all aboveboard and open, this time.”

“Oh yes, you and your magic dick,” Akechi said snidely, his eye rolling apparent even under his black mask, and then he did a startlingly real-sounding fake moan. “ _I love you, you asshole._ ” Is that your sex fantasy? The whole tsundere thing?”

Akira's blood ran cold, and he just stared at Akechi for a moment.

Akechi stared back. “...What, you didn't think that was my real personality, did you? Maybe it was a little less obviously fake than the first few iterations, but _please._ Crying after sex because you told me you love me?” He rolled his eyes again, then turned around, heading back up the hallway of Mementos toward the entrance. “Just thinking about it makes me fucking sick.”

Akechi was halfway down the platform when he noticed that Akira wasn't following, and turned around. “What?”

Akira managed to make his feet move, but his gaze wavered around, and he couldn't bring himself to look straight at Akechi's face.

Looking at him, slowly, realization dawned on Akechi's face. “You totally bought it, didn't you? You never felt a sliver of doubt, the whole time? You really thought—” His face twisted up in an expression of utter disgust. “ _That's_ what you want, _really_?” he spat. “A custom version with just the right amount of sugar and spice, tailored to your personal preferences? And I thought you understood me.”

Akira shook his head. “No, I—”

Akechi grabbed Akira by the lapels with his claws, yanking him close so he could hiss right in Akira's face. “I will _never_ love you, Akira Kurusu,” he hissed, and the rage in his eyes was real, the truth in his words raw as blood, “Get that through your fucking head. It's because _you_ keep having that sick fantasy that he keeps manipulating my mind to suit _you._ So fucking _stop._ ” And then he dropped Akira's collar, turned around, and continued on his way down the hallway, expecting Akira to follow.

Akira brought his hand to his collar, felt the warmth left by Akechi's grip, and swallowed the sob that threatened to well up there.

Because Akechi was right. He was completely right.

Something in Akira had probably broken that day. There were only so many times you could have your deepest fantasies thrown in your face before you started to crack, after all. And now all he knew was that you had to chase the pain, because that was the only truth.

x x x

Leaning over to the bedside table, Akira flicked on the lamp, then froze.

He wasn't in Leblanc. Well, it wasn't like this was the first time. Plenty of times, he'd been placed somewhere else. It looked like a private apartment, and it was familiar to him, but from which set of memories, he couldn't say. The blackout curtains on the windows seemed new, but he wasn't even sure about that.

Wiping off his hand with a tissue from the bedside table and tossing it in the trash, Akira rubbed his face and tried to orient himself.

He didn't remember where he'd been last night, but that was also nothing new. Either his memory had been fucked up by Maruki again, or he'd tried to fuck it up himself by getting blackout drunk, or it was some new Metaverse bullshit he didn't even want to think about right now.

Heaving himself out of bed, he stumbled to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face, and catching a glance of himself in the mirror, he leaned forward, examining himself more closely.

 _How old am I?_ he asked himself, not for the first, second, or third time. He thought he looked seventeen or eighteen at this point, but he was really losing track. There was that one time he remembered being twenty-five, but he was fairly sure he had never actually gotten that old, he'd just been made that old. Maybe. Who could say?

He spent some time combing his memories again, engaging in the familiar exercise of bringing each of his friends and confidantes to mind and thinking back on his relationships with them. This was something he knew strengthened his personas, but more to the point, it reminded him what was real, and what mattered.

He had a quick shower, then went back to his bedroom, looking for his phone. Flipping it open, he found the only contacts in it were his parents. Clicked his tongue.

Well, when there were no other leads, there was just one place to go.

Akira got dressed, slid on his fake glasses, and headed out to Leblanc.

x x x

His phone told him that it was the morning of New Year's Day, and stepping outside, he felt the brisk winter air of Tokyo on his cheeks. The trains were filled with girls in kimono going to visit the shrines, reminding Akira of all the times he had gone with his friends. The best memories had been when all of them had been there, together.

“Welcome,” came Sojiro's voice as Akira walked through the door of Leblanc, greeting him as he would any customer, and that always stung a little, but it was fine. At least he was there, just as he always was in Akira's memories.

As soon as he was there, he realized that he was hungry, and so he decided to order a coffee and curry, sitting himself down at a booth near the back facing the door to slowly savor the food as he engaged in the familiar exercise of raking his memories.

The taste was the same, as always.

Even after Akira had scraped the last few bites off his plate, he nursed the last few sips of his coffee as slowly as possible. He knew he had to get out and find everyone again. But he just wanted to stay here for a few moments and pretend everything was how it had been. Just for a moment.

But then he heard familiar-sounding chatter outside the door, and the bells at the entrance jangled, and _they_ walked in.

“You wanted coffee that bad, dude? Just buy it from a vending machine.”

“I don't have the money for coffee. I simply came here to greet _Sayuri_ in the new year.”

“I know you're gonna beg for coffee anyway.”

“Come on, let him bum some coffee! I'll pay. I kinda want one, too.”

“A hot coffee on a cold day is nice, isn't it, Ann?”

Head tilted down with his mug in front of his face, Akira's eyes slid up to watch Ryuji, Yusuke, Ann, Haru, Futaba, and Makoto all spill in through the front door, chatting away like they'd been friends for some time. Of course, none of them recognized him. A new world, everything reset. As always.

When Sojiro saw the crowd walk in, he offered them a casual “Happy New Year,” before asking, “Where's Sumire? I thought she'd be with you guys.”

“Oh, she got sidetracked chasing some stray cat,” Ann said with a smile, leaning against the bar counter. “She'll be here in a minute.”

Sojiro made an understanding noise, then jabbed his thumb toward the stairs. “He's still upstairs, doubtless spending an hour on his hair, as usual.”

“I heard that, Sojiro,” came a painfully familiar voice from behind him as footsteps came down the stairs. “I'm not _that_ vain.”

“Yeah, everyone knows he only spends half an hour on his hair,” Ryuji said loudly, and everyone laughed.

Then Akira heard the sound of light pattering down the stairs, and a black cat trotted across the cafe.

“Staying over with Goro again tonight, Morgana?” Ann looked down at the cat as she leaned back against the bar counter. “Sumire's going to get jealous.”

“Well, I'd rather s-sleep with _you,_ Lady Ann—”

And then the door jangled again and someone else walked in, panting like she'd been running. “Sorry I'm late, there was just this cat—” she straightened, adjusting her glasses, and there was something uncannily familiar about that gesture. Akira lowered his mug, looking at this girl who was so familiar and yet so different—

Maybe it was partly the clothing. Sumire had always been the pure type, but the neckline on her dress, exposed from her open winter jacket, was a little lower than Akira ever remembered her wearing, her make-up a little more aggressive than he would have expected from her, and her legs were bare in the winter air. Maybe it was that she'd gotten a new pair of glasses, or something about the way she moved. Her back was straighter and her eyes brighter, but she wasn't wearing that forced cheer of when she'd been Kasumi, though her hair was tied in the same ponytail. Her smile was smaller and yet no less bold, and she strode in among the Phantom Thieves with a different sort of confidence, the sort born of the knowledge that everyone is watching you. When she walked into Leblanc, Morgana immediately bounded to her side, wrapping around her legs and purring like a regular cat.

Akira realized he was openly staring.

Sumire Yoshizawa took three steps into Leblanc, then froze. “...Senpai?” She was staring right back at him.

As she approached his table, the other Phantom Thieves turned to follow her gaze, eyeing Akira with curiosity. “I-I'm sorry, you just look so much like someone I used to know...” Her voice shook slightly, bringing one hand to her chest to squeeze there, then dropping it. “You're...not Akira-senpai, are you?”

Caught somewhere between relief and confusion, Akira nodded. “Yes, that is me. Sumire. Can we talk about—”

But he was cut off when Sumire threw herself into the booth at his side, wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his shirt and bawled.

“Senpai! S-senpai! I can't believe—but I saw you _die!_ ” she sobbed, soaking his shirt. “What happened?! Why are you here?!”

Akira hugged her back automatically, but his mind was struggling to catch up. He'd died multiple times before, who could blame him for forgetting one specific instance? “Sumire,” he said, forcing a soothing tone. “Do you and the others not remember anything about past realities? About Maruki?”

She drew back, looking at him with confusion. “Who?”

Akira's heart sank, but he wasn't surprised. “Never mind right now. I'll tell you after you tell me what's been going on here. Have you and the others been...” he trailed off as his gaze moved up and saw someone else.

Akechi was standing there, arms slack at his sides. He was dressed completely differently from most versions Akira remembered—fashionably ripped black jeans and T-shirt with a black jacket, his hair longer and tied into a ponytail. There were no gloves on his hands, and he had a black fedora with a red ribbon pulled down over his eyes—eyes that were now flared wide, staring at Akira, his lips parted and trembling slightly.

Sumire drew away from Akira as if ceding the space to him, but Akechi didn't move.

Akira slid out from the booth seat to stand, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “You don't remember anything either? No strange dreams, no out of place memories—”

He was cut off when Akechi stepped forward and brought him into a crushing hug. “Akira.” Akechi's voice was hoarse, buried in Akira's shoulder, as he squeezed Akira painfully tight. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

Akira froze there, his hands slack at his sides as he struggled to process what was happening.

Nobody remembered. And Akechi was— _sorry?_ When had Akechi ever apologized to him for anything?

Akira grabbed Akechi by the shoulders and pushed him away, giving him a hard look in the eyes.

Akechi's eyes were red-rimmed, his expression confused and raw.

When had Akechi _ever_ cried for him?

Akira chewed the his cheek inside his mouth as he stared at Akechi, trying to evaluate him, trying to figure out how much was real, what the game was, this time.

“Tell me everything that's happened,” Akira said, looking first at Akechi, then sweeping his gaze around to all the others. “I need to know what the situation is.”

x x x

The Phantom Thieves all sat down around one of the booths at Leblanc, Morgana sitting in the middle of the table, Sumire taking up position in the middle like she belonged there, and Akechi sitting to her right. Akira sat down opposite them, arms folded, as he listened to the group tell their story—of how Sumire and Akechi had gathered the whole group together, then they had conquered the palaces of Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro, Futaba, Sae, and then Shido in turn, changing their hearts. Hearing Sumire and Akechi talk, Akira's memories settled, and he remembered the last timeline in which he'd lived, operating as a vigilante with Akechi.

The longer they talked, the more Akira's anxiety built.

“So you're telling me,” he said slowly, “that you have spent over a _year_ active in the Metaverse, and none of you have felt any doubts about our reality? No strange dreams or intrusive memories? Nothing here feels _off_ to you?”

A whole year—more than that. That was far more than they had _ever_ spent in one reality. Too long.

Akira scanned each member of the group in turn and found only confusion—even with Sumire, whom Akira could have _sworn_ had started to remember, before. Just what the hell had happened, here?

Finally, he locked gazes with Akechi, across from him. “Akechi,” he said, his tone tense. “Were you that enamored with this iteration? Looks like Maruki sure got your number.”

Of course Akechi didn't understand what he was talking about, and that just stoked Akira's irritation. Tapping the fingers of one hand on his arm, he glared at Akechi. “No dreams? At _all_?” he pressed.

Akechi glared back at him a moment, then broke his gaze and turned aside. “...Yes. I dream about your death, sometimes.”

“Which _one_?” Akira snapped back at him, fingers tapping harder. There was no point in being mad at him at all, but Akira couldn't help but feel betrayed that Akechi— _Akechi,_ of all people, had gotten complacent in this reality. _He_ was supposed to be the one who fought, who rejected the false narratives designed to deceive them. _He_ was the one who always saw the truth. That was one of the things Akira loved about him.

“Which one?” Akechi stared at him, aghast. “What do you mean?”

“There are lots of options,” Akira said, fingers still tapping, “But I mean the one where you shot me in the head.”

All eyes around turned to Akira, staring.

“What?” Akechi just stared back at him.

“You drew your gun,” Akira said with slow precision, “shot the guard in my cell, then pointed your silenced gun at my forehead at point-blank range and fired.”

Akechi's eyes widened, looking at Akira, but also not. His pupils wavered. “I...shot you?”

Akira leaned forward over the table, leaping on this thread of hope. He wasn't going to explain right now that it had been a cognition Akechi had shot, and that Akira hadn't actually been there—Akechi had told him about the details later, and Akira knew enough about the event itself. “And you know what?” Akira paused for emphasis, then let his mouth split into a grin. “You were smiling as you did it. _This is how your justice ends,_ you said. And it felt _good_ to you _._ ” Akira came out of his seat, leaning forward to get right in Akechi's face, watching his expression waver in confusion. “Because _you knew. You'd. Won._ ”

Akechi's hands slammed the table as he bounded to his feet, glaring down at Akira with open anger. “I didn't,” he hissed, his voice no more than a whisper.

“You did,” Akira leaned back in his seat. “Has Maruki gotten you so good, you've forgotten you're a killer?” Those words hurt going out, and normally he'd never say something like that to Akechi—but it was something Akechi would say of himself, and Akira needed to get into him hard to stimulate his memory, to make him remember who he really was.

“I'm _not_ ,” Akechi yelled back at him with surprising force, smacking the table. “I left that behind!” Then he closed his eyes and took a breath, sitting himself back down again. “Akira,” he said, his voice communicating careful calm, “A lot has changed in the year you were...gone.”

“None of that matters,” Akira shook his head, dropping his arms at his sides. “All of this is a false reality, Maruki has probably implanted you with a false personality _again_ and you need to wake the hell _up._ ”

“Senpai, who is this Maruki you keep talking about?” Sumire cut in, leaning towards him.

So Akira explained—everything. About Maruki's repeated alterations of reality, about the many lives they'd all lived, and their attempts to get out from under his control. Sumire and Akechi had already heard this in the broad strokes, but _apparently_ this information had just conveniently _slipped their minds_ during the time Akira had been dead, and neither of them had ever thought to consider it.

“I'm sorry, but I find this story hard to believe,” Makoto said bluntly when he was done talking. She was standing outside the booth, facing the table. "You're telling us that all our memories are fake, and we're being manipulated? That's really far-fetched.”

“Yeah...” Ann said from her corner seat beside Akira, looking down at her hands on her knees. “This is a lot to take in. How can we even know this is true if we don't remember anything?”

Akira leaned his elbows on the table, running one hand through his hair, fiddling with a curl for a minute before he dropped it. “Look. Have you never felt curious about all the white cables in Mementos?”

“White cables?” Haru, across from him, tilted her head curiously. “What do you mean?”

Akira froze. “...There's no white cables in Mementos? ...When's the last time you went in there?” When nobody answered immediately, he turned to Morgana. “You never thought to go there? I thought you wanted to find out who you are.”

Morgana looked as awkward as a cat could look, head drooping between his paws. “I did, but kinda felt like maybe it doesn't matter. I mean, who I am now is enough, and I'm happy like this...”

“We haven't been to Mementos since Shido's defeat,” Sumire told Akira. “There hasn't been any reason to go. We've been thinking maybe, it's best for the Phantom Thieves to disband...”

“No!” Akira slammed the table with both hands, making everyone there jump. Keeping his voice a measured calm, he said, “Have you never gone to the very bottom of Mementos?”

“No?” Sumire shook her head. “It's always been locked.”

“But after you took down Shido's palace,” Akira pressed, “that would have opened the door to the bottom. You never looked?”

“There was never any reason to go,” Makoto pointed out.

“We have to go there,” Akira said, standing up. “ _Now._ ”

“Hold on, Senpai,” Sumire said, standing up with him, holding out her hands to restrain him. “I think we all need a moment to talk about this a little more, to get a grasp on what's going on.”

“I agree,” Makoto said with a nod. “I don't think it's wise to jump into action based on zero evidence.”

“I go with what our leader says,” Ryuji chimed in, and hearing that made Akira freeze.

Standing at the table, he leveled his gaze straight at Sumire. “You? You're their leader,” he said, incredulous.

“Of course she's the leader!” Morgana turned around on the table to say to him. “She's the one _I_ chose, after all.”

“You,” Akira looked down at the cat, swishing his tail defiantly. “You chose her?”

“Who else would I choose?” Morgana scoffed. “Goro can summon multiple personas, too, but she's always had more. I could always sense she was the one!”

Akira stared at Sumire.

“Senpai,” she said firmly, “We're going to stay here and discuss things, and _if_ we all reach a consensus about going, then we'll go to Mementos. All right?”

Akira slid back down into his seat, where he spent the rest of the meeting silently watching the group around him carry on a meeting where Sumire's word held the most weight, where Akechi was fully included and welcome as a member of the team, and Akira's presence was entirely unnecessary.

This was all wrong.

Eventually the meeting concluded, and they decided that they would be going to Mementos in a few days, after the New Year's holiday was over, so everyone could spend time with their families. Akira had no choice but to go along with their decision.

As they slid out of the booth seats and they were all filtering out of Leblanc, Akechi reached out to grab Akira's arm, stopping him. The other Phantom Thieves all left Leblanc, though Akechi and Yusuke shared a wordless glance that seemed to mean something before Yusuke left. Sumire shooed all the other Phantom Thieves out the door and let it close after her.

“Akira,” he said, looking him in the eye. “We should talk.”

Akira nodded back at him. “Yes. You _do_ have some memories, I can tell. I can help you remember.”

Akechi folded his arms and looked down and to the side. “I think you're right. Now that you mention it, it seems crazy that Sumire and I just both _forgot_ about everything you told us before, and we're only reminded of it now. I can only imagine we're being manipulated,” he said—and apparently he was now on a first-name basis with _Sumire,_ of all people. A first-name basis with _all_ of them, it seemed.

“Because you _are_ ,” Akira grabbed his shoulders, leaning forward. “Come on, Akechi. This isn't who you are. Being all chummy with the Phantom Thieves? Who was it who called us a bunch of self-righteous incompetents?”

Akechi scowled at him, pulling out of his grasp. “Listen. Maybe I would have said something like that before, but now—”

“That's just how he gets into your head,” Akira said, tapping the side of his own head. “He makes it feel like a natural process. But I _know_ you.” He stepped forward, getting into Akechi's face. “I've seen Goro Akechi rip off a shadow's head and _laugh_ as he gets covered in the spray of blood,” he said, voice low, watching Akechi's face carefully as he spoke.

“I'm _not_ like that anymore,” Akechi said sharply, a tinge of his old venom entering his voice. “People can _change_ , Akira. Naturally.”

“Seriously?” Akira leaned back, looking him up and down. “How? The power of a makeover?” Leaning in toward Goro's face, he narrowed his eyes. “Are you wearing _eyeliner?_ ” he said, incredulous.

“Yes, Akira,” Akechi snapped, hands on hips as he snarled at him. “I'm wearing eyeliner, because I like it. I'm sorry you're so _shocked_ that I've dropped the whole preppy boy facade now that I have friends I can be myself with—”

“ _Friends?_ ” Akira said. “You're friends with the Phantom Thieves? After all the times you said it would never happen?”

“I don't _remember_ those conversations, and if I said something like that, trust me, it was bullshit—”

“And you also don't _remember_ that you _killed_ Futaba's mother and Haru's father, huh?”

Akechi stared at him with open shock. “What are you talking about? We restored Wakaba Isshiki's mind when we infiltrated Futaba's palace, and it was Shido's goon who shot Okumura, and he survived—”

Akira stared back at Akechi, realization slowly dawning on him. “That's it,” he muttered to himself. “He made the perfect reality for you. The one where everyone accepts you, where there's nothing stopping you from being one of the Phantom Thieves.” Maruki had done similar things before, of course, but never this perfectly—never hitting just the right notes to capture Akechi's heart. “That was what you really wanted. That's why. You don't _want_ to remember.”

Akechi stared back at him, and Akira could see the wheels turning in his brain, he was putting a thousand pieces together at once, but he would never show Akira his conclusions. He always kept those things private.

Slowly leaning forward, Akira grabbed Akechi by the lapels of his jacket. “You listen to me,” he said, his voice deadly calm. “No matter how good it might feel to be here, it's _fake._ It's all fake. And I'm not going to watch you sitting around indulging in this _fantasy_ because you're full of too much self-loathing to handle the real consequences of your decisions.”

Then he let go of Akechi's lapels and took a step back. “And stop calling me _Akira._ You've always preferred to keep me at a distance, Akechi. No point in changing that now.”

Then as Akechi stood there, looking like he'd been struck, Akira turned around and left Leblanc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Are you wearing eyeliner?" is officially my favourite sentence I've written this month.


	23. The Palace of The World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back from deadline hell with update~
> 
> I went back to add some mementos-related foreshadowing...eh it's not really important, just tweakin the details.
> 
> ALSO there is fanart now (eee!) one from [@hwangdahlia](https://twitter.com/hwangdahlia/status/1296387313123987456) and another from [@psychedeliclulu](https://twitter.com/psychedeliclulu/status/1296592050972917770). Go check them out!!

Akira had a strange relationship with dreams, to say the least.

This was one of those occasions when he was aware he was dreaming and it was quite vivid. He was cornering Akechi against a pool table, pool cue in one hand, leaning in close enough to get in his space.

“Are you going to let me play, Kurusu,” Akechi said coolly, “or are you going to continue flirting to stave off your inevitable loss?”

“You're going to pretend you weren't asking for it, sticking your ass out as you took that shot?”

Akechi just smirked at him. “I'm just playing the game. If you're distracted, that's your problem.” And he shoved Akira back. “Stop wasting time and make your move.”

“I'm making my move right now, aren't I?” Akira leaned in, close enough that he knew Akechi could feel his breath.

This scene felt achingly familiar. It was very much like one of the many times they'd gone to play billiards in the January of that year—the constant push and pull, the quips in place of the sincerity neither of them could voice. Or at least, Akira had thought so, then—when he'd shoved Akechi against the washing machine of the laundromat and kissed him with everything he had, his stupid, naive heart had been prepared to abandon everything and throw himself at Goro Akechi.

That January was still like a dream to him, a golden oasis of memory in his heart. Whenever he took Akechi back to Leblanc, whenever they'd been pressed up against each other in a palace corridor, he'd fully believed they had a special connection, even if Akechi wasn't liable to admit it.

Akira had given up the happiness of his friends for Akechi's sake. He'd lied to himself for a long time about his motivations, but in the end, he'd just been stupid and in love. He would have jumped into a fire to please Akechi.

It wasn't like the warning signs had never been there. Akechi had said it himself— _you're not doing yourself any favors, getting involved with me._ Akira had ignored that, he wasn't that easily discouraged. And he knew how to get people to open up.

Maybe in another world, if they had just lived mundane lives, he could have done that. But they didn't live in that mundane world, and their plan to defeat Maruki had failed when Maruki had simply decided that the solution to the Phantom Thief problem was to press the reset button on the world, to fulfill even more of their wishes, to make it harder to say no. Maruki had taken them back to January first again, except this time, _better._ Truly _perfect._

Akira wasn't fully certain how Maruki had done it, but on that day, Akira had been locked out of the Velvet Room, and he had no longer encountered Lavenza or Igor in his dreams. That was an immense handicap, of course, but he was still able to win shadows over, so it wasn't like it was fatal.

The other thing that had happened was that the deepest levels of Mementos, where Maruki had installed his machinery, had been locked away, and every time the Phantom Thieves broke out to go investigate it, at some point in the process, Maruki would discover them and reset everything again. Back to January first.

In a way, Maruki's persistence was impressive. No matter how many times Akira rejected his reality, Maruki seemed convinced that next time, _next time_ he would get it right.

Akechi had not appreciated that.

The way Akechi saw it, Akira was as much his jailer as Maruki, and deep in his heart, Akira just wanted to control him—and could Akira deny any of that? Clearly he did want everything Akechi accused him of, because Maruki kept manifesting it as reality.

Whatever affection Akechi had maybe, perhaps, _possibly_ once had for him had been irrevocably shattered by many false lives the two of them had lived together. The more Maruki pushed, the more Akechi rejected it, and now Akira was positive that Akechi utterly loathed him from the bottom of his heart, just as deeply as he had when he'd shot Akira in the head in the interrogation room.

And so Akira dreamed—of the one month when he had believed they had something real, even if in the end it had just been created by Maruki, too. Even if this one was just as false as all the rest, even if Akechi had still hated him then, it was the closest to real he was ever going to get, the closest to love he was ever going to get.

Akira pushed his lips against Akechi's in a way he would never have dared to in a real pool hall, but he could do what he liked, here, bringing one hand up into Akechi's hair as the other leaned against the pool table.

Akechi bit him, hard, and shoved him back. “ _Here?_ Have some shame,” he snapped, but his face was red down to the neck, and seeing him angry was such a turn-on.

“What, you don't want to be seen with me?” Akira teased, but he picked up his pool cue from where it was leaning against the side of the table and circled around to the spot where he would take his shot.

“I hardly want to be seen playing _pool_ with you, let alone with your tongue down my throat.”

Akira leaned forward over the table, cue in hand, but as he lined up to take his shot, his eyes slid up to Akechi on their own. Akechi was leaning against the side of the pool table, arms folded and scowling, but he was watching Akira's shot instead of looking off somewhere else like he did when the whole group was playing pool together. He was still wearing those damn sweater vests, even though he didn't act like a goody-two-shoes anymore, and his hair had grown out a little. There was something about his face that seemed brighter—he'd been less tired, that January, and he hadn't had to cover the dark circles under his eyes with make-up anymore.

He had the same eyes, though. He wasn't as good an actor as he thought he was. Akira had sensed something was off about him from the beginning, and that sense had only grown stronger with time. Akira had met some people with that same edge to them as shadows in the Metaverse, and he thought Iwai came off like that, too, though less so than Akechi—that was exactly what had drawn Akira to him as well, though sadly, in no iteration had he managed to suck Iwai's dick. He was just too damn straight. Turning Iwai bisexual for Akira's pleasure clearly had not been on Maruki's list of priorities.

It hadn't been until Akira had seen black mask that he'd realized what he'd been seeing was violence. Akechi had it, down to his bones, even in moments like this, far away from the Metaverse and any immediate threat. Akechi still scanned rooms, watched doors, ensured walls were behind him, and checked faces and hands—every single day, in every situation.

It made Akira shiver.

“What? Take your shot already,” Akechi said, and Akira realized that he'd been staring.

Akira grinned. “Sorry, I just got distracted by your pretty face.” Then without waiting for Akechi's response, he took his shot, easily landing his bank shot and pocketing two balls at once.

Before, he probably would have failed a shot like this. He'd never been good enough to beat Akechi at chess, or darts, or pool, or in a fight, or in any of the games they played—aside from that one time, the most important time.

It felt good to have things the other way around.

Akechi snorted. “Lucky shot.”

Akechi was circling the table for his own shot when the door to the pool hall opened, and both Akechi and Akira's eyes immediately slid over to see a young blonde girl in a blue dress carrying a large book striding around the staring people and the pool tables, coming purposefully toward them.

“Trickster,” the familiar-looking said when she reached him, and Akira turned fully around to face her. “I apologize for interrupting your reminiscence, but I have something urgent to speak with you about.”

“Lavenza.” Akira nodded, and the world froze around him as he followed her off and out the door.

“So you're okay,” Akira said as he followed her through the various halls of his palace. “I tried to find you.”

“It would have been impossible for you,” Lavenza shook her head, but her feet strode with purpose. “The Councilor's power far exceeds yours, mine, or Igor's. He trapped me in his service in much the same way Yaldabaoth did with the denizens of the Velvet Room before, and Igor...”

“What happened to him?”

Lavenza didn't turn back to him. “I must show you.”

The walked in silence for a while—Akira's palace was huge now, so much bigger than it had been when it had first appeared, full of things that he didn't even remember personally experiencing—stores in Shibuya he'd never been to, people he'd never spoken with. It seemed to cover all of Tokyo in its sprawling, patchwork expanse, and maybe more. He hadn't explored it all, and he didn't know where the boundaries lay, what was behind certain doors. He was a little scared to look, to discover how much of it was not in fact under his control, how much of it was not just his memory of the world how it had once been, but...something beyond himself.

“Was that memory so special to you, Trickster?” Lavenza asked him suddenly, as they walked, her short legs moving twice as fast to match his stride.

“Yes,” Akira nodded without hesitation. There was no point in any deception with her, nor would he want to try. She had seen further to the depths of his soul than anyone else, after all, and she would never tell anyone else a word about what she saw there.

“Why?” she asked, her voice all innocent curiosity. “I've noticed memories of that connection are near the center of your palace, by the door to the basement. But it's strange. It seems different from your others. Perhaps because you are both Wildcards?”

Akira wasn't bothered that Lavenza was poking around his palace. This place was on her side of things, after all, and he couldn't fault her curiosity.

Strangely, though, he couldn't really give her an answer. “Maybe it is because we're both wildcards. I don't know.”

“Hmm. Humans are so interesting, and you especially, Trickster,” Lavenza said, pushing open the door to the grand hall that was full of the statues of various personas and of shadows he and his friends had defeated, and places they'd been. His friends waved as he walked by, and he nodded back at them.

“I do like this place so much better than the world outside,” Lavenza said as they crossed a bridge with a statue of Arsene above it, “but I wonder about all the people in it. I found a version of myself, you know.” Her back to Akira, she giggled. “Yet another!”

“What did you think of her?” Akira asked, hands in pockets.

“Oh, I liked her quite a lot. We had some fun together. It was strange. When you look at her, don't you wonder who's the real one? Do you think of me as the real one?” Lavenza turned back to Akira to give him a particularly piercing look with her uncanny yellow eyes.

“Obviously.”

“Am I? If you thought I was the real one, then would the other Lavenza in your Palace exist?” Lavenza asked back cryptically. “Whose existence makes me real? My own, or that of another?”

“Aren't you real because Igor made you?”

“Igor created many servants, Trickster. And I am but one of many, made more real every day by your eyes.”

Akira was trying to wrap his head around her typically puzzling manner of speech when they reached the door that Akira hadn't opened since he'd gotten here. It had been locked, after all—he'd come in through there, but he couldn't leave out that door again.

But Lavenza opened it easily, walking them up the stone steps of the familiar prison. For a second, Akira thought he saw something small and black fluttering out from behind him, through the door to the prison and up after her, but it vanished as soon as it appeared, and Akira quickly forgot about it, following Lavenza up past rows of empty cells.

Halfway up the steps, she turned back to face him. “Your friends were once imprisoned here, but recently, they were all released.”

Akira blinked at her, startled. “Imprisoned?”

“Yes,” Lavenza nodded, “I'm sure you were somewhat aware of it. This place was the prison that kept you from your memories, and each time you escaped, you were thrown back in your cells—by the Counselor.”

This made an intuitive sense, so Akira just accepted it. “Then everyone was let out? Does that mean they all remember?”

Lavenza shook his head sadly. “No. It simply means that the Counselor has relinquished control of their minds. Whether they remember or not is up to them.”

“But then why would he give up control? After everything he did?”

“I don't know.” Lavenza shook her head again. “Though Igor has some ideas. Come,” she said, and she continued on up the stairs, bringing Akira to that familiar circular jail of his past dreams.

The same desk sat in the center of the room, and behind that desk was Igor.

No—it wasn't Igor. Coming closer, Akira saw a doll shaped like Igor slumped on the chair, arms laid out on the desk as its head leaning on the backrest. Its jaw was hinged like a ventriloquists' puppet, and its hands and face seemed to be made of porcelain, looking rather absurd in its fine suit. A stack of blue cards sat on the table in front of it.

“Tell me, Trickster, what do you see here?” Lavenza asked as she went to go stand in her usual spot, turning to face Akira.

Akira blinked. For a second, he thought he saw the doll's eyes glow yellow, but he blinked again, and they went dark. “A doll. A doll of Igor.”

“I see,” Lavenza turned to the doll sadly. “It's as I thought. Though I see him as he always has been, your perception has been altered to keep you from communicating with him. I fear I will not be able to directly transmit his words to you either, as the Counselor does not wish you to hear them.”

“Why?” Akira pressed. “Why free you and everyone else and let me back in here, but then keep me from speaking with Igor?”

Lavenza cocked her head as if she were listening to something, paused for a moment, then said, “As you know, Igor's goal has always been to guide those who come to the Velvet Room. But I believe the Counselor seeks to prevent Philemon's interference in mortal affairs—to replace him as the new god watching over humanity. And when the time comes for you to make a decision, he does not want us interfering in your choice.”

“My choice?” Akira swept a hand through his hair, then stuck his hands in his pockets to stop fidgeting. “And if he doesn't want you interfering, then why let you go? He had you locked up too, right?”

Lavenza close her eyes thoughtfully, an odd smile on her face. “He said he felt badly about keeping me split in two, and wanted to make it up to me. He took me on a date in the human world after that, you know. It was quite interesting. I like that Counselor.”

If this were anyone else, Akira would have made some comment about Stockholm Syndrome, but Lavenza clearly had different values than humans did, and felt no resentment about her imprisonment. If she was okay with it, it would be weird for Akira to be mad on her behalf.

“And what do you mean by a choice?” he repeated his question.

“Yes,” she nodded, her eyes otherworldly yellow, brighter than he remembered, as she gazed straight at him. “A choice that will cost you greatly, no matter which option you pick. The world has undergone many rapid changes of time and perception, and the collective unconscious is unstable, due to meddling by an _inexperienced_ hand. What will become of it, I cannot say. But if time is to go only forward, then the chick cannot return to the egg. ...Though you could lay more eggs,” she added with a giggle.

Lavenza's words seemed terribly ominous, but Akira wasn't ready to divine their meaning.

“Will you be able to help me?” he asked her. “Even with Igor like...that.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course.” She nodded at the doll and the desk, and the stack of blue cards spread out along the table, as if moving on their own.

“No matter who you are to the world, you will always be my Trickster,” Lavenza said with wide, sharp smile and bright yellow eyes. “And I will accompany you to the end.”

x x x

On the day they were to go to Mementos, Akechi texted Akira, asking him to come over to Leblanc early so they could discuss things privately.

He'd half-expected Akechi to text him earlier, but he hadn't, and Akira wasn't sure if he was disappointed or not.

Akira had spent the past few days going around the city, seeing what had changed during the time he'd been dead. He didn't bother going to school—he'd given up on that particular activity a long time ago. He'd taken his exams multiple times by now, and he didn't need to crack open a single textbook to pass—not that he cared about passing anymore.

He'd also explored Mementos alone. As he'd expected, the wall near the bottom prevented him from reaching the depths—it would only open for the Phantom Thieves, and he was not one of them anymore, so he would have to wait.

He did, however, notice that Mementos was...different. Mementos was always ever-changing, of course, and it had transformed in various ways over the various iterations, but it seemed more chaotic than ever before, more grueling to get through than Akira remembered. Remembering what Lavenza had told him in his dream, he worried what this meant.

Upon walking into Leblanc, Akira was greeted by the sight of Sojiro behind the counter giving him the usual curt “Welcome,” followed by, “Goro, your friend's here,” and then there was a clatter of dishes in the back before Akechi came out to the front—hair in a short ponytail and wearing a green apron.

Akira couldn't help but stand there for a moment, staring.

“Close up for me if all your friends are coming over,” Sojiro said to Akechi, clapping one hand on his shoulder with a warm smile, and Akechi _smiled back._ “See you later then,” Sojiro said, hanging up his apron. Then he went to get his hat and coat, giving Akira a polite nod as he walked out the door.

A particularly nasty feeling coiling in his stomach, Akira took a seat at the bar in front of Akechi. He couldn't stop staring. Akechi looked so...

Soft.

“Enjoying your new surrogate father figure?” Akira said. He'd meant to say it as a joke, but it only came out sounding snide.

Akechi sneered at him—and that expression was a relief to see. “I don't remember you being _this_ much of an asshole. Are you sure it's not _your_ personality that's been manipulated?”

Akira glared at him. He _could_ explain everything about their imprisonment in the blue prison and what Lavenza had told him, but he'd always hated trying to explain Velvet Room shenanigans—it frankly made him sound crazy.

“I'm very sure,” Akira said slowly. “And if I'm an asshole now, it's because—” _because of you_ just about popped out of his mouth, and he bit his tongue. Even if it was true. Akechi had rubbed off on him, hard. But it was Akira's fault that he'd let it happen. Maybe a part of him had envied Akechi's hardness, his resilience, and his brutal honesty.

He sighed. “It doesn't matter. You wanted to talk, so let's talk.”

Akechi didn't respond immediately, and it took Akira a minute to realize that he was _making Akira a coffee._ When he set a latte down in front of him, Akira just stared at it.

“It's not poisoned,” Akechi said dryly.

Akira reached out to the coffee. “You really don't remember at all, do you?” he murmured as he took a sip.

It was good. It had the characteristic mild sweetness of perfectly-steamed milk and a perfectly-pulled shot, and the show-off had even done latte art—no lazy leaves or hearts, but a full spiderweb swirl design.

It was significantly better than the coffees Akira made—even after so many iterations, somehow, this was the one thing he'd never gotten better at. And Goro Akechi had made it.

Akira wondered, spitefully, if Akechi had worked so hard at this—harder than Akira ever had—because he wanted to impress Sojiro.

“I remember...some things,” Akechi said slowly, gaze sliding up as if he was searching his memory. “It's very vague.” As he spoke, he turned around and began cleaning up the cafe, starting with the espresso machine.

“What do you remember?”

Filling up a jug to soak the steam wand, Akechi paused for a long while. “It's just dreams. It's hard to explain in words. It's mostly feelings. ...And a grey room. You're there.”

The interrogation room.

Akechi had never told Akira what his most painful memory was, the memory that called him back, every time. Akira had always assumed it was Akechi's own death, or something to do with his parents. If the one that stuck with him was the interrogation room... Akira sucked in a breath, swallowing down the tiny, sick buzz of joy he felt knowing Akechi's greatest source of pain was _him,_ and no one else.

 _How much did it hurt, killing me?_ Akira wondered, but there were no answers on Akechi's face.

“How long have you been having dreams like this?”

There was an even longer pause before Akechi answered, “...A few months. Maybe longer.”

“A few _months?_ ” Akira slammed the bar, sloshing some of the perfect latte Akechi had made out onto the counter. “And you just—ignored it?”

“Yes, I ignored it!” Akechi turned around to snap at him. “I decided to chug sleeping pills instead of constantly dreaming about how I'd _killed_ you, _sorry._ ” And then he spun around to take some things back into the kitchen, where Akira heard the sounds of washing.

Akira stared down at the latte in front of him, and the mess on the counter. The cup was still more than half full, so he drank some more. No matter how sweet it was, it couldn't drown out the bitterness in his heart.

After a few minutes, Akechi returned, his composure seemingly regained. “I admit that I probably let this...Counselor you spoke of turn my mind away from it. I didn't want to think about it. And I think it was the same for Sumire.”

 _It sounds like nobody wanted to think about me,_ Akira almost said, but he kept that thought behind his teeth.

Unable to say anything kind, Akira just kept his mouth shut while Akechi finished cleaning the espresso machine and tidying the cafe. He noticed the place was far tidier than it had been when Akira had been working there. Akechi was meticulously thorough in everything, wiping even the spots under the machine that Akira had always ignored. He was probably better at customer service, too. He was good at fake smiles, after all.

Sojiro surely appreciated it.

“So why are you living here, anyway?” Akira asked him, finishing off the last of his latte.

Akechi immediately came around to collect his cup, wiping the spill off the counter. “Sumire and I made contact with Futaba soon after our fight in Shido's palace. Once it became apparent that I...couldn't continue working for Shido, she got Sojiro to hide me here.”

Akira nodded, folding his arms over the counter. It made sense. But he kind of didn't want to hear any more about it. “Then tell me more about that dream. Go through each of your five senses. First, tell me what you hear.”

Akechi dropped his cleaning rag on the counter, eyebrows coming together as he thought. “Gunshots. One, then a pause, then another one.”

“Are they loud?”

“Yes,” Akechi tilted his head, considering. “Wait, no. Not that loud. Suppressed.”

“Why would they be suppressed?” Akira pushed.

“I...” Akechi looked into air. “To keep anyone from hearing. I couldn't have anyone else knowing about it.”

“Why?”

There was a long pause, but Akechi just shook his head.

“So then what did you feel?” Akira moved on. “Touch, I mean.”

“...The room was cold. The feel of the gun in my hand. ...A real gun, properly heavy. The recoil of the shots.”

“And what about smell? After you'd taken the second shot.”

Akechi didn't reply. He just stared off into air, his lips pulling in a tighter and tighter line, until eventually, he turned around and walked into the Leblanc bathroom and slammed the door.

Akira didn't get up from his seat. He heard retching sounds, and then a long silence. He waited for Akechi to come out, but he never did.

Finally, Akira went over to the bathroom and stood outside the door. “Are you okay?”

Silence.

Finally, he heard, “You have no proof I'm being manipulated.” Akechi's voice sounded half-choked, like he was trying not to cry.

Akira sighed. “You'll find out yourself once you remember.”

“Don't tell me who I am now _isn't real!_ ”

Akira jumped slightly at how loud Akechi snapped that at him, almost screaming.

“You have no _idea—_ “ Akira heard heavy breathing behind the door, and then Akechi seemed to get control of himself—“what it took to...a-assemble the _shreds_ of myself and _make_ this life for myself. _I_ did this. I did all of it! Don't you dare fucking tell me it's fake!” His voice broke by the end, and Akira slumped against the door.

“Akechi,” was all Akira could say, after a long silence. He couldn't even apologize. What would an apology from him be worth, when he was the one trying to tear the perfect life out of Akechi's hands?

“Akechi,” Akira repeated, his voice carefully even, “Maruki—the Counselor—is a psychiatrist. He's been orchestrating your life to include a sequence of events designed to _treat_ you, because he wants to _fix_ you. And the only way out is to throw away everything that feels good and dive into all the ugliness he doesn't want you to have.”

There was a long silence after that, and Akechi didn't come out of the bathroom.

Then there was the sound of running water, another long silence, and then finally, Akechi yanked the door open. Seeing his face startlingly close, Akira saw the freshly-applied concealer around his eyes, and was vaguely impressed at how good he was at making himself up to hide that he'd been crying.

“Let me think about it,” Akechi said softly, his gaze downcast.

“You'll need time,” Akira said with a nod. “But I'll be here.”

Akechi went over to the front door to flip the sign, saying, “Why are you so fixated on getting out of this world?”

Akira folded his arms, looking down at the ground. The real answer was too complicated. And he didn't want to get into explaining how Akechi was supposed to be dead, and maybe Akira would wind up dead at the end of all of this, too, but even despite all of that, he would keep fighting it. He didn't want to get into explaining about how he didn't care about happiness anymore, he didn't _want_ it, and all he cared about was freedom at any cost.

Not now. Maybe later—when they were both ready for it.

For now, all Akira could say was, “I just want to go home.”


	24. The New Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of plot that I have to get out of the way in this chapter... sorry it's not so exciting. I did go back to make some minor edits to make Makoto more skeptical and Ryuji less skeptical. Not important, but it was bugging me.
> 
> I'm drowning in deadlines this month, thus the slow updates. But I'm workin' on it.
> 
> Oh, and check out [@psychedeliclulu](https://twitter.com/psychedeliclulu/status/1301087943784902656)'s art here, I blatantly stole those fashion ideas, aha~
> 
> ETA: I forgot the damn code names again, I had to do a quick edit to stick that in and change one small scene.

Sumire showed up before the rest of them, wearing a retro-style dress with a long coat that should have made her look good girl but weirdly came off bad girl, and it was strange to see on someone like her. Morgana hopped out of the bag on her shoulder as soon as she stepped into Leblanc, and Akira couldn't help but stare as the cat walked right past him without so much as a look in his direction, heading for the fresh food and water dishes that Akechi set down for him.

Akechi greeted Sumire with his usual cool and slightly-smug smile, showing no sign that he'd been crying earlier, and he made a coffee for her like he knew what she wanted without her saying.

She drank the same over-sweet mocha that Akira had once guzzled down daily, before he'd gotten sick of that Starbucks nonsense and settled with plain black coffee or lattes.

Taking a seat at the counter beside Akira, Sumire seemed like she didn't quite know how to carry herself around him, giving him little glances while she focused on the mug she held in both hands.

“Did Goro catch you up on everything that's happened, while you were...gone?” she said, finally.

Akira's eyebrows shot up into his hair at _her,_ of all people, being on a first-name basis with Akechi. “Saying his name like that, it makes it sound like you're dating.”

But she just giggled, no trace of a blush, and behind the counter, Akechi rolled his eyes as if he'd heard that a million times before.

“Everyone assumes that,” Sumire said with a smile, “But it's not like that between us.”

“So who _are_ you dating, then?” Akira asked flirtatiously, leaning one elbow against the counter as he turned to her, and _this_ time, she did blush. Maybe it was just ego that led him to believe she still held a candle for him. She'd liked him before, and they'd had sex in other lives, of course, but he felt she'd been particularly attached to him this time around, and he wasn't averse to it.

Or maybe he just got off on flirting with girls in front of Akechi. Akira watched him out of the corner of one eye, but Akechi was looking away, and didn't react.

“I don't exactly have the time for that sort of thing,” Sumire replied primly, raising her chin, and watching that, Akechi snorted.

“Sure, Princess,” he said, the word rolling off his tongue easily as if it was a familiar nickname for her.

“That's right, Prince,” she shot back in the same way.

Suddenly, despite being less than a meter away from both of them, Akira felt about a hundred kilometers away, and he might as well have been. It was clear they now shared something he couldn't know and would never be a part of, and though he should have been happy for them, he couldn't help but feel betrayed.

 _I remember when I was the only one you could count on,_ he thought, and he wasn't sure which of them he even meant.

Akira slid off his seat at the bar, casually stepping toward the door to look out. “When's everyone else coming?”

“They should be here soon,” Sumire turned around to say, and sure enough, within a few minutes, Ann, Ryuji, Makoto and Haru were all walking in, followed by Yusuke and Futaba.

Yusuke was wearing some absolutely ridiculous patterned scarf, and when he walked in, he pulled another ridiculous scarf out from his bag—one with a black-and-white zigzag design, and reached over the bar counter to hand it to Akechi. “You left this.”

Akechi snatched it from him, spinning around to show his back as he stuffed the ridiculous-looking scarf some place behind the counter, making a tongue-clicking sound, but he didn't say anything. Akira didn't see his face.

As everyone settled into their seats around the table in Leblanc, with Morgana sitting plop in the middle of the table like he owned the place, Akira leaned back against the bar counter, watching them.

As she was wont to do, Makoto started off the meeting. “So first, how about we have...it was Kurusu, right? Fill us in on his story,” she said, turning to Akira.

Akira didn't respond immediately. He hadn't been expecting the use of his surname to hit as hard as it did. “...You can call me Akira,” he said slowly. “You can all call me Akira.”

At his spot at the table, back turned to Akira, Akechi's head lowered a bit, turning completely out of view. Akira decided to pretend he didn't see that.

Akira told them everything—about the broad strokes of their original reality, their encounters with Maruki, and the repeated alteration of reality, and as he spoke, he saw the skepticism plain on all their faces.

“This is all way too much for me, dude,” Ryuji said as he scratched his head, voicing what everyone else was thinking. “I'm not saying you're crazy, but...”

Akira had already been expecting this. “If I were crazy, would I know you have a star-shaped mole on your left ass-cheek?”

Ryuji's mouth dropped open, and his hand shot down to slap his own ass. “How'd you know that?!”

“Because I've seen your ass a million times,” Akira said with a smirk, leaving the slightest pause for drama before he added, “...In the boy's change room. You yelled about your mole and pointed to it.”

Ryuji's eyebrows came together as he stared at Akira. “Yeah...I have done that before. But I don't remember you being there.”

“Yeah,” Akira said, gaze dropping from the table where the Thieves sat to the floor. He suddenly felt too tired to explain any further. What was the point? He just had to get them to remember, and Mementos and Maruki were likely the fastest route to that goal. “We just need to go to Mementos. You'll see the evidence there.”

Sumire looked around the table at everyone, her gaze a wordless signal.

“Might as well just go look,” Ann said with a shrug.

Haru nodded as well. “I've had a bit of a hankering to go into the Metaverse anyway.”

Once everyone present expressed their assent, Sumire swept her gaze over the cafe. “If we're all agreed, then let's go.”

x x x

When they stepped into the station in Mementos, Akira was immediately struck by the sight of the white cables that covered the walls—he could have sworn before they hadn't been present this high up, and it rattled him to see.

“What the heck is with all these white cables?!” Morgana yowled when they stepped into the shadowy train station.

“It seems you were right about coming to Mementos,” Makoto commented, expression grim as she looked around. “There's definitely something going on here.”

Akira just nodded, and was heading further in when he realized the others were staring at him, and he turned back. “What?”

“We've just never seen your costume before,” Haru pointed out. “It's very cool.”

“Not as cool as yours,” Akira shot back automatically, earning himself a blush from Haru. She'd always been so easy to charm, and he liked doing it.

“It rather resembles our leader's,” Yusuke said, and Akira had to agree. Their outfits were remarkably similar—well, the exposed leg aside. Maybe that meant something about the two of them, though Akira had never really been able to figure out what.

“I like having a similar costume to Senpai,” Sumire said with a smile as she stepped past Akira, taking the lead. “It makes me feel as if we're close.” And then, without elaborating, she called for Morgana, who turned into the catbus, and they all piled in.

They made their way down through the winding tunnels of Mementos—and the journey was not a smooth one. The paths were winding, with white cables often blocking the way, there were dead ends, pitfalls, and spikes in the ground that made Morgana yelp and complain, and at one point, they were chased at high speed by a moving wall that tossed them down three levels. And every once in a while, Akira thought he saw a rolling flash of white in the corner of his eye, but whenever he turned, he saw nothing but more cables, so maybe that was all he was seeing.

Akira was met with another shock when they had their first battle against shadows.

When he heard Futaba call, "Back up Queen, Joker!" Akira immediately spun around, mask in hand, to help, but his summon aborted halfway when he saw that Sumire was already there, hand on her mask, and rising from her was red and black wings—

_Arsene._

Sumire had summoned Arsene.

"Joker?" Akira approached her, after the fight was over. "Is that _your_ name now?"

Hearing that codename from him, Sumire flushed. "I...wanted something to remember you by. I remembered you'd called yourself that, once..." She avoided his eyes.

"...That's very like you," was all Akira allowed himself to say. "All right then, just call me Akira. I don't need a codename." And he turned away from her before his face could betray any more.

Morgana had said before that Sumire was a wildcard, but seeing the array of personas that previously only _he_ had been able to summon emerge from her mask, Akira couldn't help but watch and stare. He just watched as she and the rest of the Phantom Thieves fight as a single, well-oiled machine, one with no need for any extraneous cogs. Even Akechi was even using personas other than Robin Hood and Loki. He wasn't using as many arcana as Akira was familiar with, but he clearly had access to far more than Akira had ever seen him use.

Akira tried to summon Arsene himself, but that part of his mind was just gone, vacant.

Perhaps he'd just changed that much. Perhaps he just couldn't be that person anymore, and that was all this meant.

Akira wouldn't deny that he was a different from when he'd first stumbled into the Metaverse and manifested Arsene. Back then, he'd been so angry at the world, drunk on the idea of carrying out his justice on those who deserved it, and willing to throw himself down for anyone who needed his help. He'd been so _convinced_ he was a hero, and that conviction had made him one, for a time. Or maybe it had. He wasn't so sure anymore. He often thought about the jail at the bottom of Mementos, where all those who'd had their hearts stolen went, in the end. Sure, they'd changed the hearts of a lot of bastards who had done harm, and it wasn't like he had a passionate desire to give Shido back his megalomania, but seeing what was left of those men afterward made him shiver.

He wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end, to lose the greatest driver in your life and just...give up.

Akira would frankly rather die.

“You guys are pretty good,” Akira said after another smoothly-run battle, and Sumire turned around to beam at him with clear pride, as if she'd just been praised on a perfect flip from her gymnastics coach.

“I like to think so,” she said with a grin that was almost cocky, tugging on one glove in a gesture that was eerily familiar to him. When she turned away from him to move on ahead, her jacket fluttered in a showy way that could only be deliberate.

Of all the thoughts Akira could be having in that moment, what hit him was, _damn, when did she get so hot?_

It wasn't her body—she'd always had a great figure, though she had filled out nicely in the past year. It was the way she moved, the confidence in her stride. Seeing her swaying hips was just making him imagine what she'd look like riding his cock and _that was not a productive train of thought at this moment in time_.

Shoving aside his pointless and distracting lust, Akira sped up to follow the others through a particularly narrow tunnel that the Morgana car couldn't fit through. There were more than a few of these points where the tunnel got so narrow that they had to get out and walk. The place didn't even look like a subway tunnel anymore.

The shadows here were just as bad as the terrain—halfway through battles, sometimes, a shadow would start to throb and pulse, and then it would suddenly burst and transform into a different shadow.

“Has Mementos always been like this?” Akira asked Sumire as they edged sideways through an especially narrow spot.

“That's what I always remember it being,” she said, but then a slow frown grew on her face. “...But it wasn't like this before, when it was just you and Crow, right? It wasn't this bad. Now that I think of it, I remember that.”

“I feel like this is...weird,” Morgana piped up from ahead of them. “I can't really say why, but it feels like it's not right. All of Mementos feels...off. Sorry I can't say anything else,” he added with an apologetic meow.

Akira couldn't even guess at what this meant. “Let's just keep going. There should be answers if we get to the bottom.”

“What's at the bottom?” he heard Akechi call out from further ahead.

“I hope it's not a giant shadow or somethin',” Ryuji moaned from behind him, and Ann, behind Ryuji, agreed emphatically.

 _I wouldn't rule that out,_ Akira was about to say, when the ground and walls around them all shuddered, and before he could register what was going on, the floor dropped out from underneath him and he fell into darkness.

x x x

Akira woke in pitch black, rubbing his sore head. He felt like he was in one piece, though. “Guys?” he called out.

“Here,” Sumire replied immediately, to his relief, and the follow-up calls of “Over here!” and “Here!” from voices that sounded like Ryuji and Ann were also good to hear, but it seemed like it was just the four of them, and the group had gotten split up.

There was a rustling sound, then a blinding flicker as Sumire pulled out a very ordinary flashlight and pointed it around at all of them, making Akira, Ryuji and Ann squint in the glare.

“You're all okay?” Sumire asked.

“I mean, my butt hurts,” Ann griped. “And I can hear you thinking stupid thoughts, Ryuji, shut your brain up.”

“I didn't say nothin'!”

“I said you're thinking it! I can tell!”

“What are you, the thought police? C'mon, back me up here, Joker!” Ryuji turned to Sumire, who was pointing the flashlight politely at a spot between them instead of in their faces.

“Were you thinking it, though, Skull?” Sumire said sweetly.

Choked silent, Ryuji drooped. “Yes...” he confessed, and Sumire came up to pat his shoulder. She whispered something in his ear that made him blush, and then moved on ahead of the group.

“Let's see if we can find the others,” she said, and Ryuji and Ann followed after her as unquestioningly as they had ever followed Akira, and Akira followed them at the tail as a silent observer.

They fought some shadows as they made their way through winding tunnels on a gradual slope upward, Ann and Ryuji babbling to each other all the while. Normally, Akira would have found their banter entertaining, but now, it just made him want keep an even greater distance between them as he followed them.

“Senpai?” Sumire called back to him during a particular moment of silence. He realized, funnily enough, that he was the only one she called _senpai,_ despite everyone else but Futaba being older than her. She didn't act like their junior anymore.

“Here,” Akira replied.

“You were just really quiet, and it's so dark, I got worried.”

She was checking up on him. Showing concern, just like a good leader.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?” she asked.

“...I was thinking that you've changed a lot.”

“...Yes, I have.”

There was more there in his throat, but it wasn't the kind of thing he could bear to say, so he just went silent, and they continued walking.

Eventually they ran into Morgana, who'd been lost by himself, then Futaba, Haru, and Makoto, who'd remained above when all the others had apparently fallen down into different caverns, and finally Yusuke and Akechi, who had wound up the furthest away, and showed up flushed and sweaty like they'd been running.

“Finally!” Morgana said with a hop when they were all reunited in an open space where he could transform again. “Then let's get going!”

They were some ways down into Mementos when Sumire called for a break at one of the rest stops, pulling out rice balls and sandwiches for everyone to eat. Akira accepted a tuna sandwich and leaned against the subway wall to eat as he asked the Sumire the question that had been building inside him for this whole outing.

“So if you have the wildcard power, have you seen...” he brought his hand in front of his face in the shape of a long nose.

“Huh?” she tilted her head, confused. Apparently not.

“How about you?” Akira turned to Akechi, who was sitting on one of the benches in the rest stop.

Akechi jumped as if he'd been lost in thought before turning to Akira. “What?”

“You never saw the long nose?”

Akechi just gave him a _what are you talking about, you loony_ look, so Akira dropped it. This was exactly why he didn't like talking about the Velvet Room...

As Sumire, Makoto, Futaba and Morgana discussed their plan for proceeding, Yusuke, Haru, Ann and Ryuji seemed to be in the middle of an ongoing discussion about the Shujin school gardens that Akira had no context for participating in. It sounded like Yusuke and Haru were having two separate conversations about what it should look like, while Ann was desperately trying to get them on the same page, and Ryuji was being roped into it because Haru needed someone to carry stuff, and Yusuke was ignoring her subtle “I need a man” signals.

Akechi was leaning against the opposite wall of the wait station, looking like his mind was somewhere else. Akira watched him without watching him.

Akechi was different. Even if he seemed like he was still setting himself apart from the others, the pure physical distance he placed between them had shrunk, and Akira knew that meant something. Every once in a while, the others turned the conversation to him, and he contributed a remark or two, and chuckled when everyone else laughed. He made some snarky quips here and there. It all seemed genuine—or at least, more genuine than he'd been when Akira had first met him.

But when they fought shadows, his eyes never flashed red, and he never really let go. He never showed that part of himself that Akira knew was there.

Asking Makoto a few questions, Akira learned a bit more about the events in this world, and found that things were basically as he had thought. Okumura had been shot by Shido's assassin, but then survived. Wakaba Isshiki had lost her mind and been in an institution, but then had her mind restored. Through various events, Madarame had avoided prison, and though his career was ruined, after his change of heart, he and Yusuke were repairing their relationship. Shiho had jumped, but had been saved by pulling her into the Metaverse at the bottom of her fall. Ryuji had had a falling-out with the track team, but it had been all patched up, the physio on his leg was working out, and he was set to join the team again the following year. Sae had pulled back from work a little, and her and Makoto were spending more time together.

None of these things had just suddenly fallen out of the sky, like they had the first time—they had all been accomplished by the Phantom Thieves. Sumire had sensed early on that Shiho was not okay, and it had been her quick thinking in the moment that had saved her from the fall. Akechi had been the one to dig through the research on mental shutdowns and delve through Futaba's palace to discover that Wakaba Isshiki had placed a cognitive copy of herself there that they could use to restore her mind. Madarame had avoided prison because the whole group had gotten together to contact all of Madarame's former students, deciding as a group to push for a sentence that focused on restorative justice instead, having Madarame use his former connections to bring to light the work of those former students whose careers he'd crushed while he poured all his money and time into a nonprofit for supporting new artists.

Akira listened in silence as Makoto filled him in. What could he say? There was nothing he could say.

When they reached the bottom of Mementos, as Akira had thought, there was nothing—no giant chalice, no Yaldabaoth. _That_ wasn't something Maruki was capable of recreating. But they took the elevator there upward, winding through those familiar and yet alien roads of Mementos until finally, they reached the monitor room that Akira recalled from many of his lives.

It was different from the last time, however.

“Whoa!” Futaba crowed as they stepped into the vast, bright white chamber of machinery, cords and screens. It was bigger than a warehouse, filled with disturbingly organic-looking computers with cords that pulsed like veins and fans that hummed like vocal cords.

“What the heck is this place?!” Morgana yelped as he scampered all around, eyes wide. “This definitely isn't supposed to be here!”

As the Thieves all explored the vast area—and there were no shadows here, just machinery—Futaba poked around a bit before finding a spot to hook up her laptop, plop herself down cross-legged on the white tile floor and start clacking away madly.

“Find anything?” Sumire knelt down behind her, leaning to look at the screen.

“Oh yeah,” Futaba nod-nodded. “A lot. Too much, actually. There isn't even any encryption or anything, it's just so much uncatalogued _stuff_ that searching it'll probably take—ah!” She jumped as if something had hit her, then entered a string of something into what looked like some kind of command line interface, and a new window popped up.

She sat there staring at her computer and continuing to clack away for another ten minutes, then twenty minutes.

During the wait, Makoto approached Akira. “I have to apologize for my earlier skepticism,” she said. “It seems there is a lot going on here that we wouldn't even have noticed, without your pushing us to come here.”

“It's fine,” Akira shook his head. “You were right to be skeptical.” He paused, looking at the floor a moment with his arms folded. “Being here doesn't strike you at all? No sense of...deja-vu, or anything like that?”

Makoto shook her head. “No. This all feels entirely new to me. I've been thinking about what you said about having our memories overwritten, and how the way to open them up again is to search our most painful memories... But still, I haven't felt anything like what Goro has described. I don't know.” She looked away as well, gaze sweeping the room. “I don't feel as if there's anything missing in my life.”

Akira's arms dropped to his sides, and he shoved them in the pockets of his coat. “...I see.”

Makoto seemed to reach a belated realization, eyes widening, and she waved her hands. “I didn't mean... I'm sorry. From what I understand, the way you see it, we were all your friends, and we've forgotten you, haven't we?” She paused a moment, expression pensive. “That must be painful.”

“I'm used to it.” That wasn't even a lie. He was.

“But well, even if I can't remember, we're all together now, right? I'm glad we could have you with us.” She reached out her hand like she was going for a shake.

After a moment of dumb hesitation, Akira returned her shake. Makoto was smiling, and Akira smiled back at her—a very easy thing to fake, all the way to the eyes.

“Hookay!” Futaba said, suddenly smacking her laptop shut. “There's no way I'm gonna be able to fish through all this right now, but I set up a connection so that I can shuffle through this stuff from the outside.”

“Can you tell us what you've learned so far, Oracle?” Sumire asked, and the other Thieves, who'd been lying around chatting, eating snacks, or napping, all gathered together to hear what she had to say.

“Hmm,” Futaba mussed at her hair with one hand as her face scrunched up. “This room is connected to everything. _Everything._ And I mean like, _everything,_ ” she failed her arms wide to emphasize. “And it all looks...untouched? Like there wasn't any additions to the code for like, a solid year or more, it was just running a pre-existing program. But then recently there's been a big update—or not an update so much as a rollback? It's just this thing that voids out most of the code that's already been written. Most of this stuff isn't even running at all, it's just like...in standby for something. I dunno, it's hard to say, this is kind of guesswork. _But._ ” She stood up, cradling her laptop under her arm. “I think I can trace back to find out who's got administrator privileges, here. It's just gonna take some time.”

“How long?” Akira asked, already feeling antsy.

She tilted her head. “Not more than a week, I think. But I gotta take this home and work on it. My brain's fried for the day.” She yawned.

“Yeah, I'm beat too,” Ryuji agreed, rolling his shoulders. “Looks like we came as far as we can come, anyway,” and the other Phantom Thieves piped up in agreement.

“Then let's head back,” Sumire said, and with no protests on that order, they headed out.

x x x

They were just stepping out of Mementos and into the Shinjuku night when Akira's phone rang.

 _Who the hell could that be?_ He wondered—nobody in this timeline even had his number. Pulling it out, he saw the call was coming from an unknown private number.

“Hello?” He brought it to his ear.

“Please don't be alarmed or yell or anything,” came a familiar soft, pleasant voice on the other end, and Akira just about dropped his phone.

Moving away from the other Thieves, who were having a brief wrap meeting before heading home, Akira hissed into the phone, “What the _fuck_ is this about?” He _was_ alarmed, and he did very much want to yell, and he was even more pissed that the man on the other end had anticipated just how he would react.

“Kurusu,” Maruki said evenly in that calm tone that made Akira want to scream, throw his phone on the ground, and stomp it to smithereens, “Now that you've seen the current state of Mementos, I'd like to talk to you.”

Akira couldn't even respond. The only thing his body wanted to do was reach out and punch something, preferably Maruki, and he was breathing too hard to form coherent words.

As if he were fully aware of all of this, Maruki continued. “Come to the location of my former Palace in Odaiba so we can talk. And don't tell the other Phantom Thieves.”

“Why the fuck should I do what you say?” Akira managed to squeeze out, and it even sounded halfway to calm, too. “Of course I'll tell them.”

“I think,” Maruki said carefully, “After you hear what I have to say, you won't want to tell them. Though you're of course free to do as you will. At the very least, you know you can trust me when I say that I'm not going to hurt you or do anything that would upset you, and we're just going to have a conversation. I have important information for you that I know you'll want to hear. Come at your leisure, I'll know when you arrive. Please consider it.” Then he hung up.

Akira's hand dropped from his ear, and he spent a good minute just trying to pull himself together.

He hadn't spoken with Maruki for...an immeasurable length of time. He had no idea what this was about.

What the hell was he going to do?

“...Senpai?”

Akira whipped around when he realized that Sumire had been calling him.

“We're about to head home,” she told him, “I just wanted to thank you for your help tonight.”

Not trusting himself to speak, Akira just nodded, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. He looked down at the road a moment, then said, “See you,” and before she could respond, spun around and left.

Sumire was left standing there, watching him go, with the odd sense that something was off with him, but unable to figure out what to do or say. So she went back to the others.

“Hell of a guy, huh?” Ryuji said, scratching his head as he followed Sumire's glance off in the direction Akira had left.

“He has a very mysterious aura,” Haru agreed.

“Very dangerous,” Ann added, saying it like it was a compliment.

“And he's strong!” Morgana said from Sumire's arms. “I feel like he's a lot stronger than all you guys, even you, Sumire. ...Sorry!”

“Oh, I know he is,” Sumire replied, not offended in the least. “I'm only able to do what I do thanks to all of you...Senpai is strong all on his own. Kind of like you, Goro,” she said with a smile.

Goro wasn't smiling, though. He was staring off in the direction Akira had left.

“What are you thinking, Goro?” Sumire asked him softly.

“Just...” Goro tore his eyes away from the spot where they'd been locked, “Wondering what's going on in Akira Kurusu's mind.” He sighed. “Whatever, I'm just going home,” he said, turning to go.

But the moment that last word was out of his mouth, the world wobbled around them, pulling them into the Metaverse again.


	25. The Counselor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have literally two and a half pages of notes purely on the things I planned to have Maruki explain in this chapter and I didn't even get through them all. *holds head in hands* There will be more later. If this seems ass-pulled, it's because I put in foreshadowing in later edits. I've changed minor details here and there to improve consistency. This has been literally the hardest chapter to write in this whole damn fic just because of the sheer volume of info-dump. I hope it makes sense... @.@

Akira was no stranger to strange dreams.

He wasn't quite sure when they'd started—probably way back, just as an extension of his normal life. It was normal to have dreams in which your friends appeared, after all, and normal for your dreams to reflect your waking life. The more you thought about someone during the day, the more they would appear in your dreams at night, he figured, and he put a lot of mental energy into his interpersonal relationships.

But after Maruki had begun to change the world, his dreams had gradually become sharper, clearer. The more out of control his waking life became, the more the dreamlike elements like flying and falling left his dreams, replaced instead with grounded events like conversing with Yusuke about his next painting, or having tea with Haru.

He hadn't thought much of them at first. It wasn't like he remembered them all, or even most of them. And being locked out of the Velvet Room, he hadn't had anyone to ask about what they meant.

But there was one particular dream that had stuck out to him, and after that, he hadn't been able to ignore them any longer.

He'd been sitting with Akechi at Jazz Jin, that familiar tune in the background. Both their drinks were empty, and Akira couldn't say how long they'd been sitting there.

“You've got to realize what you're doing at this point,” Akechi said, tone conversational.

“I've always known,” Akira replied, fiddling with his straw.

“Deep down, sure, but you're in denial.” Akechi's hand was flat on the table, sliding his empty glass back and forth absently. “And I'm not going to let you lie to yourself.”

“You lie to yourself every day, though.”

Akechi turned to glare at him. “Like I said, I'm not going to let you lie to yourself.” Drawing his hand back from the table, he laid his gloved hands in his lap and looked Akira square in the eye. “Kurusu. If it comes down to it, you can't count on me to defend this place for you. I was never loyal to you, and you're fully aware of that.”

This was no surprise to Akira, but it still hurt to hear. “I know. I'm not counting on you or any of the others to defend this place, anyway. If they come here, don't hurt them. I just want you to make sure...” He twisted his straw in his fingers. “...Make sure their hearts are in the right place. That if they're going to destroy me, they can take care of everyone. You included.”

“...It can be arranged. But you know what that will cost you, right?”

Akira closed his eyes. “Everything.”

Akechi sighed and looked down at the table.

“What?” Akira asked him.

“Why are you doing this? You're basically just laying yourself out like a lamb for slaughter. You should fight to defend your own mind, at least.”

“You know I'm not like that.”

“You're an idiot. If you were willing to delude yourself a bit more, then I could kill anyone who comes to try to hurt you, or at least fuck them up enough to discourage them. You know I'm strong enough to do it. _You're_ strong enough to do it.”

“Sorry I'm such a bleeding heart.”

“I like that about you, though.”

Akira stopped fiddling with his straw and let his hand drop on the table. “Do you really?” he asked, leaning toward Akechi. “Do you really like that about me?”

What use was there asking a cognition, though?

“I...don't know...” Akira brought his hands to his head, carding them through his hair. He tried to think, combing through all his memories of Goro Akechi, analyzing his facial expressions, his body language, his words, sifting through every clue available to him to try to figure out how Akechi really felt. The _real_ Akechi.

“Do I really know who you are...?” What if this was another fake? What if he was just lying to himself? This whole palace, built for preserving his memories of the true reality, and it was just filled with lies.

“You probably don't really know me,” Akechi said coldly, shaking his head. “But this is a cute attempt at making yourself feel better.”

Shadow Akira sobbed, but when the the real Akira woke up, his head was cold and clear.

x x x

Akira decided to go visit Maruki the next day—he was too worn out for a fight, if anything happened.

So he collapsed into bed, falling asleep almost immediately.

He dreamed he was welcoming his friends into his home, but forgot it all upon waking.

Akira remembered that the stadium that was the previous site of Maruki's palace had once just been a construction site, but now, it was a completed facility, humming with activity.

Pulling out his phone, Akira stepped into the Metaverse, finding himself in his black coat and mask in an empty white building covered in signs that said things like _closed—moved to new location._ Maruki had changed the location of his Palace early on to prevent Akira and the Phantom Thieves from finding him, and each new iteration seemed to place it somewhere new.

There were no shadows around. The place was eerily quiet and sterile, the only sound Akira's boots on the linoleum. Some paper signs with arrows had been taped up along the halls, showing Akira to a reception room that looked rather similar to the counselor's office at Shujin where Akira had once met with Maruki to talk.

Scanning the room cautiously, he found it far homier than the rest of the building. The couches and the easy chair surrounding the coffee table all looked worn, and the walls were decorated with photos of people Akira didn't recognize. There was even a bowl of snacks in the middle of the coffee table, with a discarded wrapper to the side, as if someone had just been eating there.

It was all _so_ deliberate.

With a curl of his lip, Akira went to stand against one of the walls, leaning there so he could keep his eyes on both doors.

It was hardly a minute before Maruki appeared, coming in through the door on the opposite end, greeting him with a gentle smile. “Hello, Kurusu. It's been a long time.”

In other lives, Akira would have immediately tried to attack him, but he knew the futility of that now. The real Maruki would be in his real Palace, and this was simply a projection.

Being a projection, you'd think it would look the same as ever, but there was something subtly different about him. His skin was a little smoother, his hair a little crisper. It wasn't like he'd just gone to the salon—it was more as if his human imperfections had simply worn away, leaving a more streamlined design. But maybe that was just Akira's imagination.

Akira didn't return his reply, but Maruki's smile never faltered. “Go ahead, take a seat,” the counselor said, waving at the couch, as he sank into the easy chair, leaning forward to grab a wrapped senbei for himself. The crinkling of the package was particularly loud in Akira's ears.

After a moment's hesitation, Akira sat as directed.

“Have a snack if you like,” Maruki said as he crunched on his senbei. Akira did not take a snack. “I'm sure you have lots of questions. But first, let me begin with an apology.”

Akira twitched a little, but didn't respond, and Maruki seemed to take that as a cue to continue. He swallowed his cracker.

“It was never my intention for things to turn out this way.” There was contrition on the man's face. “You being separated from your friends like this, I mean. I meant for all of you to grow as a group together. So I apologize.”

The rage of the previous day had simmered down into the familiar knot of cool anger in his stomach, so he had no problem staying calm as he said, “ _That's_ the part you apologize for? Not everything else before that?”

Maruki shot him a sharp look—and that was something new, something he hadn't done as a human. “I've told you before that I wouldn't allow you to stop my plans for the world. I just did what was necessary.”

“You could have just killed me.”

And then, of all things, Maruki looked at him with infuriating _pity._ “Your life is valuable to me. I couldn't.”

“If my life were _valuable_ to you, you wouldn't keep destroying it.”

Maruki sighed. “Look, there's no point in us having this conversation again. Let me tell you what I invited you here for.” He leaned forward earnestly over his knees. “You've seen the state of Mementos, right?” when Akira nodded, he continued, “Mementos is a reflection of the collective unconscious, as you know. And of late, the collective unconscious has been...unstable.” Maruki reached up to scratch his cheek with a finger. “It's a little difficult to explain in terms you would understand.” Seeing Akira's dead look, he added, sounding a bit flustered, “Oh, I'm not saying you're stupid, I mean, you're simply...” he paused, the hand that had been scratching moving up to adjust his glasses. The lenses flashed. “Not a god.”

“Then enlighten me,” Akira said flatly.

“I wouldn't want to damage your mind, and honestly it's not even exactly what you might be think—” Maruki cut himself off there. “Oh, you don't mean actual enlightenment, do you? Aha-ha.”

The revelation that Maruki could confer enlightenment was something to set aside for another day, it seemed, as the man went on. “To put it in the roughest terms. The repeated alteration of perception on a mass scale has caused a certain degree of instability, which you saw reflected in Mementos, such as how more convoluted the paths there have become. And I'm sure you saw things such as shadows of one type morphing into a shadow of a different type?” Seeing Akira's nod, Maruki continued, “That is one matter of concern, because it speaks to an...instability of identity, on a subconscious level.”

“An instability of identity?” Akira pressed. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“Yes...” Maruki leaned back, lacing his fingers in his lap. “Identity is a slippery thing—potentially the greatest lie and yet also the greatest truth of all,” he said, and the cryptic way he put it reminded Akira highly of Igor and the denizens of the Velvet Room. Was that just what happened, when you spent all your time living on the other side? You started speaking in riddles?

“Kurusu,” Maruki said, looking pensively up at the ceiling, “I don't suppose you know what I mean by ego death?” Akira shook his head.

“I suspect it's something that simply cannot happen to persona-users. But well, among the general populace, it's fairly uncommon. Something that happens occasionally to marathon meditators, or users of psychedelic drugs. It's described as the sensation of the lines between yourself and the world blurring, and _you_ as a person disappearing. Something like the Buddhist concept of oneness.” Maruki nodded to himself, looking back at Akira. “Does that sound frightening to you?”

Honestly, it sounded terrifying. “Not more frightening than having my memory rewritten.”

Maruki smiled wryly. “Fair. Well, there's a theory that our brains are really nothing more than a collection of neurons, and the _self_ as we know it is an illusion we create in order to function. The experience of ego death is, some say, evidence that the self is an illusion.”

“Some say? If you're a god, shouldn't you know everything already?”

Maruki laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “I'm not _that_ kind of god. I can only know what humans already know. And the brain is still a mystery to human scientists, so I'm no more enlightened than anyone else in that area.” Lowering his hands into his lap again, he continued. “The truth is, Kurusu, that I've underestimated what it means to alter perception. It's not simply like tossing a pair of colored glasses over someone's eyes. Because identity is based on perception, alter perception, and you alter identity.” He looked straight at Kurusu. “I learned that from you and your friends.”

Akira thought he got an inkling of what Maruki meant, but he pressed anyway, “How?”

“Well, look at them now—Yoshizawa and Akechi, I mean. They, as well as those around them, believe themselves to be different people, and so they are.”

“Because _you_ fucked with their heads,” Akira snapped back at him.

Maruki's eyes widened, and he waved his hands. “Oh no, not at all. I stopped doing that quite some time ago, you know? Because those sorts of slapped-on personality changes,” he waved a vague hand, “don't stick. I found that to be true with all sorts of people, and not just Akechi and Yoshizawa. Rather than reaching in and altering their perception, I've found it more efficacious to provide a constructive environment for them to grow into the kind of people they wish to be.”

That was basically just as Akira had figured, but hearing it spelled out made a shiver run down his spine. “You mean manipulating their lives to get into their heads.”

“You can put it that way if you like,” the counselor said with a frown, “but ultimately, I was just giving Akechi a supportive community to help him, and putting Yoshizawa in a position where she could feel needed as someone more than a copy of her sister.”

“Looks like you've done a great job, counselor,” Akira said. “Fantastic.”

“You can be sarcastic all you like, but the fact remains that without my intervention, both of them would have killed themselves. And now you can see quite clearly that they're both happy where they are in life. I've greatly reduced Akechi's trauma in various areas, and Sumire has fully recovered from her depression.”

Akira opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't say anything. Sumire had always put on a strong front, he'd never imagined she would end her own life. But maybe that was just proof that he didn't know her as well as he thought—if even _Maruki_ knew her better. And Akechi—well. He would. He had.

“Like I said. I didn't intend for you to be left out.” Maruki rubbed his forehead. “You know what? Let's start from the beginning—the beginning of this iteration, I mean. This really is difficult to explain...”

“Do your best.”

“Right,” Maruki totally ignored his sarcasm. “Well, just as identity is based on perception, so is time. As such, it's been another tool at my disposal, and I've manipulated perception of time all over the world to fix global issues. I made it so the Iraq War never happened, you know,” he said, looking weirdly proud.

“The Iraq War...?” And here Akira had thought his poor memory for global events had been because he didn't pay attention to the news. That explained his confusion.

“Yes, so I put you and your sphere of influence into a...sort of space-time bubble to operate on its own for a year or so of your perception while I handled more important matters in other areas of the collective unconscious.” When he saw the look on Akira's face, he added with a little scowl, “Don't assume you and your friends are the center of the world. I was dealing with global geopolitics. _”_

“Installing yourself as the grand dictator of the world.”

“And bringing about world peace and ending world hunger, and on my way to ending climate change, for your information,” Maruki said. “Do you have any conception of how complex all of these issues are? No, of course you don't. These things never would have been accomplished by humanity, but I did it.” The man was clearly desperate for someone to brag to, but Akira wasn't going to give it to him. He just rolled his eyes and looked away.

Maruki sighed, sagging in his seat. “It's impossible for me to devote my conscious attention to absolutely everything at once. Even as I am now, that's simply beyond me. So a large portion of processes are...automated, so to speak. Your bubble of influence was once such process. I set it about a year before your original awakening, with the intention of having you, Akechi, and Yoshizawa get to know each other first before introducing the other Phantom Thieves.”

“Because you knew if we all got together at once, I would stimulate everyone's memories,” Akira said bluntly.

“Yes, that was part of it,” Maruki acknowledged, “but I also placed the two of them with you because they're the most emotionally unstable of the group, and they would benefit from having you around. The other Phantom Thieves could wait.”

“But then if you were all about making us _happy_ ,” Akira said that with particular bite, “then why did Kasumi have to die? Why could no one perceive Sumire for who she was? Why was Akechi still under Shido's thumb?” Akira leaned forward, pressing his palms against the edge of the table. “You're not making sense.”

“As for the first,” Maruki said with a frown, “That was an accident. No...I shouldn't say accident. More like...an inevitability?” He crossed one leg over the other. “I've learned a lot, in my time with Adam Kadamon. And one is that there are powers out there greater than my own. I rather come to understand why Philemon has such a principle of non-interference...but I'm getting ahead of myself. There are certain...tent-pole events that are difficult to avoid, in terms of causality. Kasumi Yoshizawa's death was one. And then that snowballed with some previous programming I'd done, you see, it's not as if this is a new program, just a longer and more complex version of the old ones—so in absence of Kasumi Yoshizawa, it snapped back to the default mode of Sumire Yoshizawa being perceived as her, but then since her self-perception has been damaged by so much repeated alteration, and her wish to be _nobody_ was run through the program and granted automatically, to a degree...” Maruki trailed off, muttering to himself.

“Her self-perception was _damaged?_ ” Akira leaned forward, tone sharp. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Ah,” Maruki tapped his cheek. “I will get into that. But let me finish my train of thought, first. What was I talking about? Oh yes, inevitabilities. Your arrest was another. And then Goro Akechi's death was another—and yes, I did intervene then. You're _so_ lucky that I was keeping tabs on you that day, and I was able to revive him quickly enough that it didn't seem like he had died.”

Akira wasn't in the least surprised to hear that Maruki had been watching his behavior at that point. “So then what about _my_ death? You weren't just taking me out of the picture because my remembering was getting a little too _inconvenient_ for you?”

“Aha-ha-ha,” Maruki laughed, scratching his cheek awkwardly in a way that told Akira he was totally on the mark, “That was entirely an accident, I swear. I set Shadow Shido to being very powerful as a measure to prevent the Thieves from defeating him too early. I didn't expect you to charge in there so quickly.”

“You didn't want us to defeat him too early? Why not?”

Now Maruki really looked embarrassed, blushing and turning away slightly. “The truth is...I kind of made a mistake. A big mistake.” He cleared his throat. “I sort of...locked myself out of Mementos.”

“...What?”

“Look,” Maruki waved a hand, “I thought I'd planned everything perfectly, but this was the first I'd ever manipulated perception of time. When I turned back the clock, public perception was turned back as well, and so it slammed shut many of the gates of public recognition deep in Mementos as well as erased my main Palace, since that was included within your sphere of influence. So then I couldn't access my machinery in the Mementos depths, which prevented me from doing most things within your sphere of influence. Of course, there are other sections of the collective unconscious,” Maruki stated that as if it were a fact Akira already knew, “but I was most deeply established there, you see. It kept me from doing all sorts of work. I could only run some tweaks here and there, personally running around to attend to various matters, and you have _no_ idea what a struggle that was.”

Listening to Maruki complain about how hard it was to rule the world was rather like listening to Haru complain about how hard it was being rich, except Maruki wasn't cute. Akira said nothing.

“So everything just kept running on auto, and I couldn't take control again until the Phantom Thieves had attained full notoriety again and opened up all the gates. So the full program had to just keep running until it was complete—until the present, I mean.”

Akira wasn't sure that he bought this at all. It made far more sense that Maruki had simply wanted him out of the picture for a while. Maruki had always come off as the type who was too awkward to lie, but these days, Akira knew better. Maruki was a manipulator. One who manipulated for the supposed benefit of others, but a manipulator nonetheless. If Maruki thought it would benefit Akira not to know, then he would hold back. Akira understood that mindset better than anyone.

Maybe what he said about _inevitabilities_ were true, but maybe Kasumi had simply died to fulfill Sumire's wish to be her and Maruki thought that was a wish worth granting, maybe Akira been arrested as an attempt to keep him out of the picture, but then Akechi had foiled that plan. Trying to drill down into every single event in his life and think about the _intention_ behind it wasn't worth it. It was crazy-making.

It didn't matter if Maruki had killed him on accident, or as a calculated plan to remove him. The result was the same.

“So then why was Akechi still under Shido's thumb?” Akira pressed.

Maruki's expression darkened. “You've seen how many attempts I made at re-writing his life. He never accepts it. He's been even more stubborn than you about rejecting the perfect reality.”

“Of course he has been.”

Maruki just nodded. “Yes. It's not as if he's particularly unique, in that regard...people aren't made to be happy. Give them perfection, and they find something to be unhappy about. Sometimes, you form your identity around the thing that makes you most miserable.”

Akira stiffened in his seat. “What are you trying to say?”

“I mean to say,” Maruki said soberly, “That Akechi won't accept a reality without Shido.”

Akira couldn't reply to that. He didn't want to believe it was true, but he couldn't argue it, either.

“It was all I could do to rub off some of the harsher edges from his life, and yours. But neither of you would accept anything good.” Maruki sighed, then leaned back in his chair again, and didn't say anything more for a long moment.

Maruki was dancing around the issue, here, stating it in the cleanest terms possible, but the way Akira saw it, the facts were these:

Maruki had manipulated their perception of time as a part of a strategy to weaken them. Firstly, creating lives similar to what they already knew would be psychologically easier to accept than an idealized reality. Secondly, taking them back in time before the awakening of their personas would essentially de-power them for a time, buying time for Maruki to arrange things as he pleased. And finally, going back in time had enabled him to craft the identities of those who had rejected direct manipulation in the past—Sumire and Akechi—through manipulation of their environments. And that was if Maruki was even telling the truth about not manipulating their minds directly, which Akira didn't really believe.

“So then what about all the people Akechi and I killed?” Akira asked. “You're fine with just letting them die?”

“Oh of course not,” Maruki shook his head. “Don't worry, those were all dummy shadows, and those people never existed in the first place. I just had Shido gain the benefits he was seeking from their deaths with a few perception tweaks. I wouldn't let you or Akechi kill anyone else,” he said, his tone annoyingly soothing.

Akira's first reaction was incredulity. “That's ridiculous. I would have noticed if they were _all_ fake.”

“Perhaps so, if you'd looked into them, actually investigated them. But you avoided seeing any news of their deaths, and so did Akechi. He did his best to pretend like those people had never existed. You only ever interacted with them in the Metaverse. Do you even remember any of their names?”

Akira didn't.

“You were forced into a situation where you felt you had to kill them,” Maruki said gently, his eyes sickeningly sympathetic. “It's natural to feel guilty, and to want to avoid that guilt.”

“Don't _you_ fucking talk to me about guilt,” Akira jerked forward to smack one gloved hand on the table. “You're the one who created some...sick fucking murder simulation to keep Akechi and me occupied!”

Maruki didn't even so much as twitch in response, though. “Akechi wished to have been a vigilante, so I fulfilled that wish of his bloodlessly. And didn't you want that, too? The both of you have always had those...tendencies.”

He said that last word like he was embarrassed, and Akira went hot with shame. He wondered how much Maruki knew, how much he had seen. Maruki knew every intimate detail of his life, didn't he? Even the things that were supposed to have been just for him and Akechi. And maybe there was one sick corner of his mind that had enjoyed having something to tie the two of them together—a shared sin, _bound by blood,_ in all its cliched glory. Something he could shove in Akechi's face whenever he insisted Akira didn't understand him.

But more than the personal invasion, the knowledge that all the decisions he'd made had actually been softened into fake video game death instead was what really infuriated him. _Ha ha, you thought you were a heartless murderer, but that was just for play. Just a game that I made up for you. Now it's all over, happily ever after for you!_ No consequences. No consequences at all, just like a game. It was all a fucking game. His choices meant nothing. Just be happy, now.

Now he couldn't even have blood on his hands—all he had was the realization that even his own monstrosity was no longer under his control.

Akira expelled a long breath. “Let's get this back on track. You mentioned Sumire had _damaged self-perception._ What did you do to her?”

“That, I must admit, is my fault,” Maruki looked quite sheepish. “Her identity has essentially been tweaked too many times. She had a fragile self-perception in the first place, and well, you saw what happened with her Palace. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. A self-perception can be a negative thing, and letting go of it leaves room for growth. And you understand that well yourself, don't you, the power of letting go of the self, adopting an array of personas?”

Slowly, realization dawned on Akira. “You made her a wildcard. You messed with her head and you made her a wildcard because you needed someone to replace me.”

“I wasn't trying to _replace_ you...” Maruki winced. “I simply needed someone to take charge to lead the Phantom Thieves through the timeline—”

“You didn't _mean_ to shatter Sumire's identity so you could mold her into a superior version of me, but it just _happened,_ that's what you're saying?”

“Kurusu, she's not any version of you, and neither of you is better or worse,” Maruki said, his eyes counselor-kind. “She's her own self—”

“Bull _shit!_ ” Akira slammed the table with both hands, and stood up, taking a step toward Maruki. “You made her into _me!_ Me except sweeter and kinder and honest, making smarter decisions all across the board and actually _helping_ people with their problems instead of ignoring them half the time to fuck off and bone my teacher, me without the addiction to action and an obsession with my fucking killer! You did all of this to get me _replaced!_ And it _worked!_ ” By the end of his rant, he was leaning against Maruki's chair, grabbing him by the collar, for all the good that would do.

And Maruki, always calm and reasonable and gentle Maruki, pushed his grip away with a light touch that forced Akira to release him.

“I understand that you're angry,” Maruki said smoothly. “And your anger is valid.”

Akira's fist was flying out before his mind even followed it, but it phased through the projection's head, hitting the back of the sofa. Akira withdrew his fist and spun to face away from him, jacket fluttering. “Just tell me why you called me here,” he said, and was surprised at how calm he sounded.

Maruki, thankfully, got to the point. “Yoshizawa's...instability...is not unique. As a persona-user, she's in fact somewhat insulated from the consequences. Altering perception on a mass scale has resulted in growing rates of unstable identity on a global scale. This is no immediate threat, and the people involved are usually not in fact hurt by it. However, any time you have a...trend within the collective unconscious, it results in...phenomena.”

This was news. Akira turned back to Maruki, but didn't sit down. “What sort of phenomena?”

“Well, you've encountered one yourself.” Maruki gestured at him, and when Akira didn't seem to clue in, he said, “I'm talking about Yaldabaoth. When the collective unconscious gains a unified desire...in this case for, perhaps, a new identity, that tends to result in the birth of a new...well, you would call it a god.”

“A new god?” Akira unclenched the fists he hadn't realized he'd made. “There's a new god?”

“Oh no, not yet,” Maruki waved his hands. “It could happen in a month, and it could happen in fifty years. These things are very unpredictable.”

“So what,” Akira thrust his hands in his jacket pockets, “You want to get rid of the competition before it appears, is that it?”

“Well, if you want to put it like that, you're not too far off,” Maruki said with a wry smile. “I have in fact rather biffed it with this world, creating all these instabilities all over the place by meddling with minds willy-nilly. I was inexperienced, and I made a lot of mistakes. I honestly regret so much.”

“So then undo it!” Akira flung out one arm. “Just drop this whole stupid fake world and take us back to reality!”

Maruki shook his head slowly. “I'm afraid I can't.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Maruki gave him an incredulous look. “Surely you've figured it out by now—you knew that time was a factor in getting a new reality settled in. It's been over a year in your sphere of influence.”

Akira just stared at him. “You're lying.”

“I'm deadly serious,” Maruki stood up to meet him on eye level. “Akira Kurusu. The old world is gone. This is now reality.”

This was fake. Just another lie. Just another false reality. Just another mind game designed to make him give up. “But if I can make them remember—”

“They're not going to remember,” Maruki cut him off, tone so gentle it made Akira want to scream. “If they haven't unlocked their memories by now, it's incredibly unlikely that it will happen. I released all of them immediately after Shido's defeat and presented various triggers to them myself, and none of them remembered. They don't _want_ to remember.”

Akira drew himself up to his full height—he could match Maruki when he wasn't hunching. “You're lying,” he said, his voice perfectly even.

“I realize this is hard for you to accept, but I still have more to tell y—”

Akira tore off his mask and sent an armored angel blazing through the room, demolishing the couches and blasting a hole in the floor. The Maruki projection remained untouched.

Leaving the room burning behind him, Akira strode out of the building.


	26. Distortions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at [this.](https://twitter.com/hwangdahlia/status/1311316714244567040)
> 
> As usual, retroactively adding foreshadowing, lol... This chapter is more laying out plotty things. Next chapter will be the juicy stuff.

When the world stopped wobbling all around, Sumire found herself with the other Phantom Thieves standing at the entranceway of a wide-ceilinged hall. From where they stood, they could get a view of the whole place—a maze of walkways and bridges decorated with grotesque statues and a disjointed selection of different movie-set like snippets of a variety of different familiar locations. Smooth jazz played in the background, giving the whole place a gentle ambience.

“Whoa,” said Ryuji, and then he said what everyone was thinking, “What the hell just happened?”

“This is the Metaverse, right?” Ann stepped forward cautiously, looking around. “But we're all still in our normal clothes.”

“That means the master of this Palace doesn't see us as a threat yet,” Morgana pointed out. “Stay on your guard, though.”

“Did our conversation trigger this by accident, then?” Makoto mused. “Since the last one to talk was...” She looked over at Goro, who said nothing.

By this point, they were all pulling out their phones to see the text on the screen: _Akira Kurusu, Mind, Home._

“It's his Palace...” Sumire murmured, stepping ahead of the group to get a better look at everything. She paused. Then turned back around. “Maybe we should leave for now. And talk to him first. This is kind of invasive, don't you think?”

“If he has a Palace, that's already a good reason to investigate it, at the very least,” Goro said. Sumire looked over at him to see he was keeping his face carefully neutral in the way he tended to when he was trying to hide his cards. That on its own was suspicious, though.

“But we don't have to do it now,” Makoto came in to back up Sumire. “We're all tired, and it's been a long day. Let's come back when we're well-rested.”

Goro turned his head to roll his eyes out of Makoto's view. “Well, if _you're_ already worn out, there's nothing to be done about that.”

“Excuse me?” Makoto shot back, ready to turn this into an argument, but Sumire knew to cut this sort of thing off before it turned into pointless bickering.

“I'm tired, too,” she said, though she wasn't really, “And Futaba looks like she's about to fall over. If you want to explore this place alone, Goro, go ahead.”

Goro sighed, but Sumire could tell he would capitulate with another push.

Before Goro could say anything more, though, their conversation was interrupted.

“Hi, guys.”

Sumire turned around to see Akira standing there, hands in pockets. He was wearing the Shujin school uniform, and glasses, though Sumire had never known him to need them before. But his eyes were yellow. He was a shadow.

“I've been waiting for you,” Shadow Akira said, and his face broke into the kind of wide, sincerely happy grin that Sumire realized she hadn't seen on Akira's face since...since Kasumi's death, probably.

“Come on,” the shadow said, turning around and taking a few steps further into the Palace, and when none of them followed, he turned back. “You're not coming in? I've got so much to show you, though.”

The Phantom Thieves all looked to Sumire.

“Um, we just came here by accident, and we're rather tired...” she said, but it didn't even sound convincing to herself.

Shadow Akira's face fell. “I've been waiting for you so long, though. I made this place right outside the prison, thinking you'd come here if you escaped, but you never did...” His eyes swiveled over to Goro. “Except for you.”

“Me?” Goro pointed at himself, and all eyes turned to him.

“Yeah, you've been here.” Hands in pockets, Shadow Akira rocked back on his heels, was staring obviously at Goro as he spoke. A grin slowly split on his face. “We had a great time.”

Goro didn't respond, but Shadow Akira seemed to take that as his cue to move on. “I won't waste your time fooling around, then. It'll just take a few minutes to show you the important stuff. So come on.” And he turned around and started walking. This time, Sumire followed, and the rest of the party went after her.

Crossing over one of the bridges, under a statue that Sumire gasped to realize was in fact of Arsene, they reached a wall full of screens with letters spelling _gallery_ hanging above it in bold red.

“I'm in the habit of standing here to watch stuff,” Shadow Akira said as he followed the Thieves' gazes up to the screens, “But if you guys are tired...” He paused for a minute, cocking his head, then turned a corner Sumire could have sworn hadn't been there a minute ago to push open a door that lead into the darkness. He held it open, gesturing for them to go inside. “Go on.”

Sumire hesitated just a moment before taking the first step forward, into the darkness. “...Oh, it's a movie theater,” she said, turning back to look at the others. “Might as well go in.”

“To watch a movie?” Makoto tilted her head.

“Something like that,” Shadow Akira said with a charming smile.

So they all filed in, filling up the front row of the theater. When Sumire sat down in the middle, Morgana unquestioningly sat beside her, while Shadow Akira took her other side. Makoto seated herself boldly to Shadow Akira's left, while Goro sat down on the far left, as far away from Shadow Akira as he could get. Akira's yellow eyes flicked over at him, but Goro didn't look back.

When they were all seated, Sumire looked toward Shadow Akira, who took out something like a remote control and pointed it at the movie screen in front of them.

Immediately, it showed a scene of a stark-white building that Sumire had never seen before. Akira and Goro were there, as was Sumire herself, and there was also someone else—

_The Counselor._

The words came up to her lips, and she just about said them out loud, but she kept them shut. She felt like it was a bad idea to say.

It wasn't like she thought Akira was untrustworthy. She just didn't tell anyone about the Counselor—the soft-voiced man who had once appeared in her dreams, guiding her and provided her with new powers. The Counselor had gently revealed to her sides of herself she'd never even thought to look at before, showing her that she could be whatever she wanted to be. If she closed her eyes and sought in her heart, she could sense the unbreakable bond she shared with the man in that strange blue room. The twins had always been distant with her, but him—she could tell he would do anything for her.

She knew what Akira had said about the man he called the Counselor, and it was clear how angry he was. But it was hard for her to share his anger when she didn't remember anything he was angry about. And what came up on screen next was more strange and unfamiliar scenes she didn't remember, but felt...real. Too real.

The Sumire on the screen in front of them collapsed to her knees, begging to be made Kasumi again, saying it was too painful to be Sumire, while the Counselor gathered her in his arms and took her away.

There was a cut, a different scene. Akira was fighting against Sumire's persona—Cendrillon, one Sumire remembered having once had, but never used anymore, she wasn't someone who pretended to be Kasumi anymore—as Sumire was wreathed in tentacles, begging him to stop.

Akira won. In the end, Sumire accepted her identity as Sumire, and awakened to a persona called _Vanadis—_ one Sumire had definitely never had before _(the thought of being that person terrified her)_. The screen went dark.

The movie screen lit up again to show more scenes after that. There were scenes of every single one of the Phantom Thieves—a scene of Makoto being dragged to Kaneshiro's hideout and blackmailed, a scene of Futaba awakening to her persona and defeating a cognition of her mother, who was dead, scenes of Ryuji and Yusuke in Kamoshida and Madarame's Palaces, a scene of Ann watching as Shiho jumped off the school roof, a scene of Okumura dying on TV. There were scenes in Palaces and the Metaverse, and scenes at school and at Leblanc, and in every single one, Akira was there, in the center of it all, the magnetic force drawing everyone together. Akira.

Not Sumire.

It wasn't as if she didn't exist in that world. She was there—as a pathetic, deluded side character who chased after Akira's attention and hung on his every word, and one who always remained an outsider to the group. Whenever she appeared, Sumire turned her eyes from the screen—she couldn't bear to look at the horrible, uncanny version of herself that you would only take to be Kasumi if you'd never actually met the real Kasumi.

Sumire had a hard time paying attention to the details of all the scenes they saw. They were all familiar, and yet wrong. They all turned out wrong, worse than the memories she had. Akira had told them about these things before, but actually seeing it all was something else.

When the screen went dark for the last time, silence fell, and Sumire felt she had to be the one to break it.

“What was that?” she asked, tone carefully measured.

Shadow Akira turned to her. “That was the true reality. That was what really happened.”

“So,” Sumire said slowly, “You're telling me those scenes we just saw up on this...movie screen were real,” she gestured to the screen, “While the lives we've lived for the past year are fake.”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” Shadow Akira replied. “Your lives are all fake. And _you're_ fake.”

Sumire turned to him. “What?”

Flicking something on the remote, Akira turned on the theater lights around them, and stood from his seat, looking down on her. “I mean obviously, the real Sumire is in there somewhere. But you've been implanted with a fake personality, to make you into an appropriate leader. Since I mean, normally you wouldn't have been able to do it, right? You don't have what it takes.”

Sumire was frozen in her seat. She couldn't reply.

“That's not true,” Makoto came to her defense, standing up to face Akira. “Sumire might seem timid, but when it comes down to it, she makes the decisions that need to be made, and she takes care of people.”

“Does she?” Shadow Akira raised an eyebrow. “I remember a Sumire who begged to be brainwashed into being her sister again, because she just couldn't stand being herself.” He raised a hand to point an accusatory finger at Sumire. “You haven't changed one bit,” he spat, his lips twisting in a smug sneer that kept her nailed to her seat.

Sumire knew she should say something, do something. The right thing to do, the Joker thing to do, would be to show defiance, to be bold _(like Kasumi)_ , but she was just filled up to the throat with the terror and despair she'd thought she'd strangled to death, she thought she'd killed that stupid, worthless Sumire who was always looking to be saved. And now all she could do was sit there, wide-eyed, and stare at the yellow-eyed Akira in front of her.

“Hey, what do you know?” Ryuji stood up, taking an aggressive step toward Shadow Akira. “You haven't seen her for like a year. What right do you have to talk shit?”

“Yeah!” Ann stood next. “I think we know her better than you!” And then all her friends joined in, standing to defend her.

With all the Phantom Thieves glaring at him, Akira seemed stunned speechless, staring back at them. His face fell, and he turned away. “If you don't want to listen to me,” he shoved his hands in his pockets, then turned back to them with flashing anger in his eyes, “then get out. I don't need you here spouting delusions and lies.” He took a step back, then swept his gaze over all of them. “Weren't you all in a hurry to go, before? Then get out!” he snapped, and the sharpness of his voice made some of them jump.

The words of support from her friends undid everything that was wound up tight within Sumire, and she finally rose to her feet to turn her back to Shadow Akira. “...We've had a long day. Let's go,” she said quietly, and when she started walking off, the others followed.

Sumire was distracted on the way out, but not too distracted to notice Shadow Akira grabbing Goro's arm on the way out. He leaned close to whisper something to Goro, but Goro jerked out of his grasp and walked away. Shadow Akira watched him go with a penetrating glare.

Seeing that, Sumire realized that none of the scenes they'd been shown in the theater had been focused on Goro. He'd been a figure in the background, but his face had never been shown once.

But Sumire couldn't even begin to speculate why. The exhaustion of the day suddenly came down on her all at once.

On the way out of Akira's palace, Sumire thought she caught sight of a black butterfly in the corner of her eye, but it was probably just exhaustion. They left the Metaverse and headed home.

On the train back, Sumire thought about texting Akira, but she couldn't bring herself to just yet.

x x x

Usually, Morgana's weight on her stomach felt comforting, but that night, it was oddly suffocating, and Sumire pushed him off, pretending she was doing it in her sleep while that cat meowled in protest.

She dreamed of the blue prison, but it was vaguer and fuzzier than she remembered it being before. These days, she could still see the door, but it was always locked and the twins were never there, and no matter how she rattled the doorknob, they wouldn't let her in.

In this vague and blurry dream, all the cells were empty and open, and the desk was empty. Here and there, the ghost of the Counselor flitted about, saying things like— _“You are your life, and nothing else,”_ _“What do you want to be, Trickster?”_

“ _A man—or a woman—is what she wills herself to be.”_

And he smiled at her—comforting, and yet revealing nothing in his eyes, just like Akira.

She knew he was gone, and she wondered if she would ever see him again.

x x x

Sumire's old deal with Goro to train him had developed into a regular thing, and after Sumire had quit gymnastics, it had become going to the gym together. They'd run into Ryuji there one time, and then continued to run into him, and so despite Goro's initial reluctance, the three of them had gotten into the habit of meeting up twice a week to work out.

Recently, Ann had joined their workout group, saying she wanted to “Get a great model body!” so the four of them met up at Protein Lovers in their school gym uniforms in the evening.

They started out on the treadmill, as usual, running to warm up, before they went on to stretching. Sumire was in the habit of spending a lot of time on that, and Ryuji had his own set of stretches as a part of the physio on his leg, so they wound up all on the floor mats doing leg stretches together as they chatted.

“Soo...” Ann said, looking around at all their faces as they danced around the topic they were all thinking about. “What are we going to do about that Palace?”

Ryuji pulled out of his forward stretch, leaning back on his hands. “Do we hafta do anything? I mean, it's not like he's doing anything bad, here. ...Right?” He seemed a bit doubtful.

“I mean,” Ann said, “His 'distorted desire' is just to get back to the reality he remembers, right? Is that even distorted?”

Goro's forehead was pressed to the floor between his spread legs when he said, “If what he perceives is different from reality, then wouldn't that make it a distortion? He believes this world is false and wants to change it, so by the standards of this reality, his desires are distorted.”

“...Not this world that's distorted?” Sumire sat with the soles of her feet together, her knees easily touching the floor in a relaxed position as she leaned forward to stretch.

“Well, that's all relative, isn't it?” Goro replied to the floor.

“So what,” Ryuji said. “Is the world real or not?”

Sumire didn't say anything—she wasn't sure she could answer that question.

“In essence,” Goro said after a pause to sit up, “This is no different from the sort of epistemological skepticism philosophers have grappled with for centuries. In Descartes' famous thought experiment, he postulated that if there were an evil demon that could completely fool you into believing the existence of a false external world, how would you know what's real?”

Ryuji's eyes glazed over as soon as the word “epistemological” came out of Goro's mouth, but he did catch the last part, repeating, “...So how would you know what's real?”

“You don't,” Goro replied with a wry smile as he folded his legs to sit more comfortably. “That's the point. You can never know, and we all simply rely on the habitual assumption that our senses tell us the truth.”

“I bet that _a la carte_ guy never went to the Metaverse, though,” Ann said. Goro rolled his eyes, presumably in response to her name-butchering of Descartes, but she caught him on that, sticking out her tongue as she added, “It's kind of missing the point to get all philosophical over this if this Maruki guy actually has power over manipulating reality. If he's been for real messing with our lives, then we should stop him, right?”

“Yeah, but,” Ryuji said, his lips dropping into a frown, folding his legs like Ann, “he's made our reality _better._ You saw what that shadow showed us in the movie theater. Do you wanna go to a reality where Shiho can never play volleyball again?”

That shut Ann up, and silence hung among them for a while.

“But...Sumire saving her, it happened,” Ryuji said after a long moment of thought, and when he spoke, the others looked up. “You were there, I was there," he looked to Ann, “and we saw her do it. Whatever is going on with the world around us, that was something Sumire figured out and accomplished of her own free will.”

Ann slowly nodded along with him. “...Yeah. And you got into doing physio because you wanted to, right? Nobody else was forcing you into doing that. Saying a world where you never started that is the 'real' Ryuji is weird.” Then Ann seemed to notice Sumire's silence, and she leaned over to bump her shoulder. “And all that stuff about you being fake or whatever, don't listen to that. Everyone's kind of faking it at the end of the day. You just have to do your best to be someone you can like, right? And no matter this stuff about reality or whatever, it doesn't change that we're friends.”

It felt good to hear that from Ann, even if Sumire couldn't be so sure. She looked back at Ann and Ryuji, smiling at the both of them. “...Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Ann.”

Goro didn't say anything more, though, getting to his feet. “...I'm going to start on weights,” he said and left, and they all went to continue their individual work-outs.

x x x

Sumire decided that they would leave Akira's Palace be for the time being, and focus on the Councilor's Palace instead, since he was the one who seemed to actually be in control of things, and they could learn more about what was going on there. She also asked the others not to mention Akira's Palace around him just yet, since she wanted to speak to him one-on-one, and they agreed.

After a few days of nonstop hacking, Futaba said she'd finally tracked down the Councilor's Palace and they could infiltrate it, so Sumire summoned the group to Leblanc so they could discuss it.

Sitting beside Futaba at a booth at Leblanc, with all the other Phantom Thieves and Akira clustered around them, Sumire leaned in to look at the screen of her laptop. It was covered with even more weird and esoteric nonsense than Futaba's usual content.

“Is this...special Metaverse code, or something?” Sumire asked her, blinking at the screen. It didn't even look like Japanese or English.

“Yeah, sort of?” Futaba tilted her head. “It's not as weird as it looks. Or maybe it is. It's like a program with a whole bunch of different little pieces written by a million different people and in different languages, which usually would never work, but like...when I plug Necronomicon into it, I just...understand. It's weird.”

Sumire was a bit curious to hear more, but she also knew if she got Futaba going, they'd be there all day. Fortunately, Makoto knew how to keep the ball rolling. Standing leaning against the booth table, she asked, “So where is this Palace you mentioned?”

Futaba nodded. “It's not really like normal Palaces at all. It's basically...everywhere. It's the whole world.”

“The whole world?” Ann said from across the table, eyes widening. “How come we never noticed it before, if it's that huge?”

“Any Palace is basically hidden, if you don't know the keywords,” Morgana pointed out, tail swishing over the table. “Doesn't matter how big it is.”

“All the Palaces we've been too have been quite big, when you think about it,” Haru agreed from her corner seat.

“So go on, Futaba,” Sumire prompted the girl at her side.

“Yeah,” Futaba started up again. “So this Palace is basically everything, and that made it so hard to pin it down. We can walk in anywhere, but if we wanna find this Counselor guy, we have to basically figure out where his 'head office' is, right?” She clicked around on her laptop, then spun it around to show everyone a location on Google maps. “It's here.”

It wasn't anywhere special—just a suburban neighborhood just outside of Tokyo. The spot Futaba had selected just looked like a private residence.

“Really? That's it? Just some dude's house?” Ryuji said as he leaned forward from the other side of the table, incredulous.

“Just some dude's house,” Futaba repeated with a nod.

“Madarame's Palace was just his house,” Yusuke pointed out from his seat in the corner. His expression was closed, as it always was when he talked about Madarame. “If anything, it makes sense for the focus of someone's mind to be their own home.”

“Yeah,” Morgana agreed. “A Palace will form wherever that person's desires are strongest. There's probably something at his home he feels strongly about.”

“...So let's go, then,” Akira said from his position against the counter. He seemed particularly tense that day—tenser than usual. Ever since his sudden return, he'd seemed on edge, like a wire pulled tight enough to snap—or to strangle.

Sumire knew she had to talk to him, and she'd sent him a few tentative texts, but he'd just responded with short, curt replies that functionally ended the conversation. When she'd asked, he'd said he didn't bother going to school anymore, and she didn't press him on that. What did he even do all day?

She could push harder. She knew she should push harder. But part of her was scared to hear what he'd say if they were alone. He seemed—too different from the Akira in her memories, the Akira whose secure presence in her heart had supported her all this time.

The Akira she remembered was always gentle and kind and confident, someone to rely on...someone to aspire to.

“Yes, let's go,” Sumire nodded back at him.

They all took the train out to the neighborhood Futaba had discovered, walking down the street until they reached the house in question. It was a very normal-looking two-story home in a very normal-looking neighborhood. The curtains were drawn, and you couldn't tell if anyone was home, though.

“Should we like, go and knock on the door or something?” Ryuji rubbed the back of his head as he leaned on his good leg.

“Why would we go let him know, _hey, we know you're secretly super powerful and we're here to invade!_ ” Ann pointed out, rolling her eyes.

“If he's all-powerful, then wouldn't he already know we're here?” Yusuke mused, hand on his chin.

“He's not necessarily omniscient,” Akira cut in to say, breaking his long silence. “Though I can't say how much he does know.” He didn't elaborate, though, pulling out his phone. “Dr. Maruki, the world, laboratory,” he said, but the Nav gave him a negative response, and he frowned.

“Were those the key words before?” Makoto asked.

Akira nodded. “Yeah, when his Palace used to be at the Stadium. But this is different...” He looked down at his phone, brows coming together as he seemed to lose himself in thought.

“Is it possible for someone's keywords to change?” Yusuke wondered out loud.

“I think it would be,” Morgana piped up. “If the way he sees the world has changed. I've never seen it before, but...I don't think I could rule it out.”

“Well, if it was a laboratory before but isn't now,” Futaba said, pushing up her glasses with one finger, “then maybe whatever experiments he was doing are done, now. And he's moved on to implementation.”

Everyone exchanged looks, and there was a moment of silence.

Suddenly, Goro opened his mouth. “Treatment Center.”

The Nav pinged that key term, and Sumire looked at Goro with surprise.

Goro seemed to surmise what Sumire meant to say, and he told her, “...Kurusu said it before. He created this reality to treat us.” He looked over at Akira, who nodded back.

Seeing the team's silent agreement, Sumire raised her phone, and they all slid into the Metaverse.

x x x

When the world resolved around them, they were all standing in the same street again, the world around them unchanged—except they were all wearing their Metaverse outfits.

“Huh?” Sumire looked down at herself, then at all the world around her, and the others all did the same.

“Are we even in the Metaverse?” Ann said, looking down the street, then spinning around to look the other way.

“We're definitely in the Metaverse,” Morgana said, in his big bobble-headed cat form. “It smells like the Metaverse.”

“But I don't see nothin' here,” Ryuji said. “It's all exactly the same. Are we just in the wrong place, or what?”

“Wait, look!” Haru said, pointing off down the street, and everyone turned to follow where she indicated.

At first, Sumire didn't see anything. Then she blinked, and squinted, and focused again—in a spot down the street, around a certain house, there was an area almost like static, or pixellation, that was flickering in and out of existence. The house changed color, white, then off-yellow, white, then off-yellow.

After a few minutes, they heard the sound of a vehicle down the street, and what looked like a white utility van pulled up beside that static-covered house. A trio of faceless, spindly, rounded shadows stepped out, all dressed like construction workers, and they wiggled over to the static with bizarre-looking tools and started doing...something, while a fourth rounded shadow dressed in a white lab coat went up to the front door, stepping inside without knocking, and after a couple minutes, the shadow in a lab coat emerged from the house escorting a dazed-looking middle-aged housewife, taking her into the van. The three construction-worker shadows seemed to finish their task, and the strange static in the air was gone, and they got into the van along with the lab-coat shadow and the woman and drove off.

“What the heck was that?” Ryuji said once the white van was gone.

“Shadow Utility Co.?” Anne suggested with a shrug.

“That's kinda too obvious, as a cover name for some government black ops thing...” Futaba said.

Sumire looked over at Akira, but he just shrugged. “I don't know. I haven't been able to get into Maruki's Palace for a long time. Everything's changed.” He looked over at the house in front of them. “Might as well start here, though.” And without looking back at the others, he walked right up to the house and rang the doorbell.

“Is that a good idea...?” Makoto said, but Akira was apparently ignoring her. The rest of the Phantom Thieves hung back on the street, waiting to see what would happen.

They weren't left waiting long. After less than a minute, the front door opened, and a gentle-looking woman with her brown hair cut short opened the door. She was heavily pregnant, one hand resting on her round stomach. “...Oh, hello,” she said with a broad smile.

Sumire couldn't see Akira's face from behind him, but his tone sounded even as he said, “Is this Takuto Maruki's residence?”

“Yes, that's my husband,” said the woman. “I'm afraid he's at work right now, though. He probably won't be back until late, but I can tell him you were here.”

“No, that's all right,” Akira shook his head. “Where does your husband work, though?”

“Oh, all over,” the woman waved her hands. “He travels a lot. You won't be able to find him, since his work isn't public knowledge. You have to make an appointment with him. Did you want to make an appointment? I can pass on the message.”

“No, it's fine.” Then Akira turned back and walked away from the house, and the woman at the door watched him go with a curious expression before turning back inside and closing the door behind her.

“So that was...his wife?” Haru said as Akira approached the group.

“Looks like it.” Akira stuck his hands in his coat pockets, looking off in the distance.

“Did you know he was married?” Makoto asked him.

Akira shook his head. “I knew he was in love with her. This is new.”

“So that's his wife in real life?” Makoto pressed. “Not just his perception?”

“Most likely,” Akira answered.

“I dunno, man, this feels weird,” Ryuji said, shifting uncomfortably.

“Why, because he has a family?” Akira shot back with a sharp glare. “Being married doesn't mean what he's doing is right.”

“Yeah, but...”

“And he's manipulating that woman anyway,” Akira added. “She was totally different, before.” He didn't elaborate on how, though.

“For now, let's just explore around and see what's going on,” Sumire interrupted their exchange. “How about we take the train back downtown and look around?”

No one had any objections, so the party turned around to head back to the train station.

Overall, the city looked just about exactly the same as it did normally—the sky, buildings, and people all looked ordinary, with no apparent changes.

The one thing that was different was the little shadow crews—the white vans of shadows dressed like construction workers and in lab coats that bustled all around, unhindered by Tokyo traffic jams, squeezing past the normal cars to their destinations. There were more and more of them as they approached the city center, and more and more sections of staticky air that the crews went to with hammers, electric screwdrivers, and weirder, unidentifiable power tools. And all over, people were being escorted into vans and driven away—as well as pulling up in vans and being dropped off, released again back to the streets or their homes.

None of these shadows seemed aggressive, at least for now, and they let the Phantom Thieves wander the streets freely.

So of course, the first thing they guessed was that they should follow the white vans wherever they were going. The vans all seemed to be converging somewhere in the center of the city, around the middle of the Yamanote loop line. But when they followed the vans to their source, they found that they all just sort of...disappeared. They shlooped through manholes into the ground, or they rattled their way down train station steps into the underground and vanished.

“What's going on here, Oracle?” Makoto asked, and Futaba pulled out her laptop again, taking a seat at the sidewalk seating of some cafe after, weirdly, paying for some Shadow Starbucks.

Sipping her shadow coffee—she said it tasted just the same as coffee in the real world—Futaba said, “It looks like they're going in and out of Mementos. But it's kinda weird. They're like, popping in and out all over the place, as if they're teleporting around. If we go in there, we might end up somewhere weird.”

“Then maybe we should call it a day,” Makoto said as she looked up at the sky. It was already dark. “If we get lost down there, we'll be here all night.”

The rest of the party agreed, though Akira didn't look very happy about it. They all pulled out their phones and slid back into the real world, the same downtown Tokyo appearing around them as they reformed in their regular clothes.

“Man, this whole thing seems kind of insane,” Ryuji said once they were out. “My brain's had enough for tonight. I'm goin' home to play video games.”

“Ditto,” Futaba said with a tired groan. “I've got some level grinding to do.”

Morgana hopped into Sumire's bag automatically, but Sumire quietly apologized to him, “Sorry, Mona. I have some things to do tonight.” She was planning to speak with Akira, but wasn't sure how well that would pan out. Regardless, she wanted Morgana to leave her alone for a bit.

Morgana wasn't bothered, dropping out of her bag again. He looked toward Goro hopefully instead. He often stayed over at Leblanc—Sojiro kept feeding him the good stuff, after all.

Goro got a slightly uncomfortable look, though. “I'd like some privacy tonight, Mona,” he said, adjusting his bag on his shoulder, and Sumire caught him exchange a look with Yusuke.

“All right,” Morgana replied, “if that's what's going on, I'm going off to enjoy the city nightlife,” and he trotted off on his own without another word.

“The hell is he talking about? How can a cat enjoy nightlife? Does he party with the neighborhood strays?” Ryuji said after he'd left.

“Ryuji,” Ann jabbed him with an elbow. “That was, you know.” She gave him a look, and Ryuji did this silent _ohhhhh_ as if he got it.

Neither Sumire or any of the others said anything more, just exchanging farewells as they went their separate ways, until only Sumire and Akira were left standing there.

Akira was staring off in the direction Goro had left, lips tight, eyes unreadable.

“Senpai,” Sumire stepped toward Akira, and before he had any chance to blow her off, she said, “Do you want to go for a run tonight? I'm not tired at all.”

He seemed to snap out of his daze, and he smiled at her, though it didn't reach his eyes. “Yeah. Sure.” He paused. “I don't have a change of clothes, though.”

“Yes, you do,” Sumire said with a small, growing grin, and she pulled out her phone again. “We both do.”

This time, his smile seemed to go all the way. “Good point. Let's go.”

The world shifted around them, and they returned to the Metaverse.


	27. Becoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a very serious content warning for VANILLA HETEROSEXUAL SEX. Since I know there are a lot of sensitive readers here for whom this might be too much to handle. “Whoa,” you might be saying, “Chuusei, I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of content! Maybe pull back a little there!” But I'm going there. Oh yes, I am going there.
> 
> I mean, fairly vanilla. Does the Metaverse even count as public?? Pshh.
> 
> Also went back to add in some minor Sumire-related edits. She's hard for me to write. And retroactively putting in foreshadowing again... >_>; So it goes...

A run through the Metaverse wasn't quite a real workout, but Sumire had to have been aware of that when she proposed the idea.

Not to say that you didn't get anything out of exercise in the Metaverse—there were physical results, but they were vague and fuzzy. You'd work up a sweat on the other side, then step back into the real world with all your sweat gone and your wounds healed, and you'd feel exhausted but with no muscle aches, and you'd kind of feel...stronger. It was hard to say how much of that translated to real world stamina.

But Akira didn't care much about how much he could lift at the gym anyway—if he could fly freely through the otherworldly streets, that was all he needed.

Racing through this Metaverse version of Tokyo brought the differences between here and the real world into relief. Here, he was as fast and as strong as he believed himself to be, and the people...their sense of _presence_ was something you might call thin and watery. You could push past them and _through_ them as if they were hardly there, and they recognized Akira and Sumire were there, but never stared like they would at real costumed freaks in the middle of the city. They shrugged off anything the two of them did as if they barely noticed.

Akira didn't bother dwelling on this, though, deciding instead to enjoy this world where he and Sumire were the only real people in a world of images. Sometimes, he felt that maybe the Metaverse was the original world, and the “real” world was just a projection of it, a watered-down copy where everything was muted and truths were hidden.

He entertained himself with the architecture of the city, tossing his grappling hook over the window ledge on a nearby building to pull himself upward, only to leap off the side of the building, spin in the air and hit another building on the other side of the narrow street, wall-jumping his way up to the roof to leap across a series of rooftops, making the city his, finishing up with a running jump to fly over a wide roadway.

“Senpai!” he heard Sumire cry out in exasperation from behind, but he just turned back at her and grinned, a challenge for her to keep up. Most people wouldn't see Sumire as the competitive type, but he knew it would rankle her if she didn't match his Metaverse gymnastics. After a pause, she followed him, though hesitated before the final jump, and breathed a sigh of relief once she landed it.

“Senpai!” she said again, this time accusatory.

“I knew you could follow me,” Akira said with a shrug. He was sure she'd had an easier time making that jump than him, she just didn't brag about it.

“It's not like I _can't,_ ” Sumire told him, hands on her hips. “But what if you didn't make that last jump? You don't take a jump on a _maybe_ when you have no net and no spotter! What are the odds you would have failed to make that one?”

Probably about fifty percent. “You miss a hundred percent of the bets you don't take,” Akira said blithely.

“You're going too far.” Sumire was trying to sound stern, but there was no real toughness in her words.

“Come on, you're having fun, too,” Akira flashed her a grin, and then before she could protest, he dashed off again, stepping off the side of the building to let himself fall, catching an emergency staircase on his way down and swinging under it to land on the walkway below, leaped up onto the railing to jump down to a windowsill, dropped down to the windowsill below that, then released his grip to fall all the way down to hit the ground in a roll.

He wound through side streets and alleyways he didn't recognize, hopping up onto the roof of a parked car to jump from one slow-moving car to the next, each jump leaving a bang of impact and a dent in the metal roofs.

“This also damages cars in the real world, you know!” Sumire yelled behind him,

“Maruki'll fix it anyway!” Akira yelled back, jumping off a black sedan to turn a corner into an alleyway, when he was yanked backward. He looked behind him to see Sumire gripping hold of the tail of his jacket, giving him a determined frown. “What?” he said.

“ _Senpai_.” She released his jacket and folded her arms.

Akira sighed, leaning against the bare cement wall behind him. He didn't remember her being this much of a killjoy. Was this what leadership had done to her? Well, it was true the Phantom Thieves were all idiots, so maybe a firm hand was best.

“Were you always this reckless?” Sumire said with an exasperated sigh as she leaned against the alley wall beside him.

“Not really.” He was aware that he'd gotten worse. Him and Akechi together had been absolute devastation—Akechi barely holding onto threads of his sanity when he got going with Loki, while Akira had enjoyed spurring him on, seeing how far he could push him, always on the edge of being the one caught under Crow's claws, until Akira could rein him in again. When Akira did something crazy, Akechi never tried to stop him—he'd smirk and say, _oh, is that all?_ and try to one-up him with something even wilder. Akechi's one hang-up was that he didn't like wasting time—thinking about the reasons for that was something Akira avoided.

Akira shook his head, pushing thoughts of Akechi out of his mind. “You always went along with it, though, before.” She'd definitely grown a spine, since then.

Sumire paused for a moment before asking, “What was I like, then? When I...remembered everything.”

Now that he thought of it, that was a hard question to answer. After she had broken free of Maruki's brainwashing, she had still been constantly trying to put on her “Kasumi” face. She'd be quieter and more reserved when she came into Leblanc or they went out together, but in the Metaverse or in stressful situations, she would always put on that forced energy and vigor, and as time wore on, as they had pushed their way through timeline after timeline, she'd become more and more like that...all the time. Maybe that was why Maruki's brainwashing had failed to take, the final time—she already _was_ Kasumi.

Akira wasn't sure he wanted to tell her that, though. He doubted it would help her remember, anyway. “Not like this.”

Sumire turned her head away from him, folding her arms. “You liked me better before?” She seemed genuinely upset about it, and there was something else in her voice Akira couldn't pin.

Akira pushed off the wall, and turned to stand in front of her. “I like you better like this,” he said with a small smile, enjoying the blush creep up her cheeks.

“I-I...” Sumire stammered, looking up at him, and like this, she was back to being the old Sumire. The contrast was cute.

Letting his arm fall onto the wall by her head, Akira leaned close to her. “You just keep catching my eye, here in the Metaverse.”

Cheeks flushed, her eyelids fell slightly, and Akira could tell she was looking at his lips. “I...noticed,” she said softly.

That was surprising. He'd thought her more naive than that. “You really have changed.”

Her eyes raised up to meet his, and her gaze held a heat that made him shiver. “I have,” she said, and then she grabbed him by his vest and pulled him down into a kiss.

Akira's eyes widened in surprise, but he immediately returned her kiss, taking her waist with his other hand, pushing her back into the wall.

She took the lead from there, her hands wandering down his sides and pulling him close as she stood on her tip-toes to pepper his lips with gentle kisses that turned into nips along his jaw. Akira brought his hand from her waist up her side to pause under her breast, seeking permission, and she giggled at his hesitation, taking his wrist to pull his hand fully over her breast. “I thought _you'd_ be more bold,” she broke the kiss to say with a little smile. “What happened to dark and dangerous Akira Kurusu?”

That, of all things, got a blush out of him. She was totally throwing him off-balance. It was hard to know how to act when he didn't know who she was. “I'm just being considerate.”

She cocked her head at him, revealing the white of her neck under her coat, her reddened lips making the gesture look particularly alluring. “I more imagined you forcefully ravishing me.”

A grin quirked to Akira's lips. “Oh did you, now?”

“I did! What are you going to do about it?” she said huffily—but Akira didn't miss the challenge in her words.

Akira grabbed her chin in an overhand grasp, pulling her lips up to his as his other hand ran the line of her body, curving over her breast to waist to ass, squeezing lightly before giving her leotard a playful snap over her butt.

“Hey!” She yelped, but made no move to stop him, hands circling around his waist.

“Was that not dark and dangerous?” Akira teased her.

“Not even close,” she replied with a growing smile.

Akira never backed down from a challenge.

Bringing his arms to her waist lowered his face to her chest and mouthed at the nipple through the cloth, eyes glancing up to see her reaction before he continued. She was looking at him with flushed cheeks and expectant eyes, so he reached up to tug down the front of her leotard and reveal the nipple.

He took it gentle and teasing, tongue swirling around the brownish circle, breathing hot on the tip as his thumb stroked the side of her breast, and was rewarded by a little squirm. He was utterly focused on her, blocking out the outside world or any intrusive thoughts from within himself. They were unnecessary right now.

“We're in public,” Akira pointed out, saying it more to emphasize the thrill than to protest as he pulled down the other side of her leotard to pull out her other breast and hold it in his palm, thumb doing circles around the nipple.

“Mmm,” was her only response, head falling back against the brick wall behind her, one hand by her head supporting her as the other stayed behind Akira's neck.

“Good girl gone bad, huh?” Akira teased as he let his teeth just barely graze the nub in his grasp. He rolled her erect nipple with his left hand while he took in a full mouthful of her right, sucking at it, and she made a tiny cry she muffled with one hand.

“I'm not...” she said, and her voice sounded breathy, “...a good girl.”

Akira didn't really believe that, so he just grinned into her breast and let his left hand wander down her hip, following the line of her leotard, tracing the skin at the edge of it down the inside of her thigh. She immediately adjusted her stance, parting her thighs to let his hand slide between them, stroking the crotch of her leotard to find it already soaking wet, a dribble of slick sliding down her thigh.

His fingers slid in under her leotard, stroking over the smoothly-waxed skin to dip down through her folds, coming back wet to stroke over her clit. Sumire gasped, her thighs coming together on reflex before relaxing again, allowing Akira to stroke her in slow circles while his mouth switched to her other breast, being rougher this time, biting a little as he sucked it. He always kept his eyes on hers, watching her breathing, her hand on the wall clenching and unclenching, listening to every sound she made.

“Hn...mm!” She brought one hand to smack over her own mouth as she suddenly spasmed in his grasp, surprising him with her orgasm. He continued to stroke her clit as she shuddered, rising from her chest to cover her slack and gasping lips with his own. Nothing did it for him like when he made a girl cum—when he could give her everything she wanted and be the person reflected in her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, the name “Joker...” was on her lips as she lifted up one leg in an easy full splits, lightly dropping one knee over his shoulder.

“As you wish, Violet,” Akira cupped her chin with his clean hand for a long kiss, the words out of his mouth before he remembered that she didn't go by that name in this timeline. But her eyelids merely twitched, and she didn't press him further.

He knew what she wanted, so he did it. Unbuckling his belt, he brought out his hard cock, wiping the slick from her cunt along it before he popped a condom out of his pocket and rolled it on.

“You just keep them in your pocket?” she said with a teasing smile on her face.

“They manifest along with the gentleman thief outfit,” Akira grinned back at her, then pulled her leotard aside to press the head of his cock against her wet folds, holding back, teasing, as he kissed her again as he pushed inside her, and she moaned into his lips.

When he was with Sumire, he could be the dashing gentleman thief, the hero out of a shoujo manga with an edge of danger who was reserved, but with a passionate heart. Akira never been able to give Akechi anything, but he could give Sumire the pleasure and the excitement she wanted, she made him feel like he was himself again as he lifted her up with the waist like you would a dancer, bracing her higher on the wall so he could get a good angle to plunge into her cunt. She was tight and hot, it had been _so_ long since he'd fucked a girl and the sight of her breasts bouncing as he thrust into her made him want to cum, but he held himself back, eyes locked on hers as devoted himself to her.

He managed to keep holding back through her second orgasm, but she was just so _good_ and she made him good, he could bury everything else, all the things that Akechi had clawed out of him to remake himself in her image, the better Joker, the purer Joker, he wanted to get into her deep enough that he could scrape out just a bit of that for himself, and when she called him _Joker_ again he came hard, his face falling against her neck as he finished with a final thrust.

x x x

“I'd have thought you were a virgin,” Akira said, something he wouldn't dared to have say if they hadn't been aimlessly wandering the Metaverse streets rather than the real ones. _In this iteration, anyway,_ he added silently.

“I'm not as much of an innocent as you think,” Sumire said with a huffy pout. “I have experience with things, now.”

“Oh?” Akira raised an eyebrow at her. “So then who was it?”

She blushed and looked away, and there was a long pause before she answered in a voice so quiet, he could hardly hear it.

“ _Iwai?!_ ” Akira burst out, startling the shadow people around him. “You fucked _Iwai?!_ ”

“Is there something wrong with that?” She gave him a sullen look.

Akira brought a hand to his hair and fiddled with the curls. “It's the exact opposite of that, agh... Let's just say... I'm impressed.” Fucking the man Akira had failed to bang through so many repeated attempts, she really was the better Joker... “So your type is dark and dangerous with a heart of gold?” he gave her a flirtatious smile.

“Anyway,” Sumire cleared her throat with a blush like she desperately wanted to change the subject, “The other day...the rest of the Phantom Thieves and I...happened to go somewhere. By accident.”

Akira turned to look at her. “Somewhere?”

She fidgeted, looking uncomfortable. “Your Palace.”

Akira's steps paused for just a moment, and then he started walking again. “Ah.” He didn't ask further.

Sumire, who had paused when he did, lagged behind a moment before hurrying her steps to catch up with him. “...Did you know about it, then?”

“Yeah.”

“We were talking about maybe...” Sumire seemed hesitant to finish. “Maybe would be better if it were gone.”

Akira stopped walking. He turned around and looked at her. Her eyes were incredibly earnest.

The worst part was that he wasn't even that shocked by her suggestion. Despite how many times he'd stuck his neck out for his friends, he'd seen them turn their backs on him again and again in reality after reality. When he didn't drag them out of it, they generally gave in to whatever Maruki offered them.

Turning ahead again, Akira resumed walking. “I don't mind if you go in,” he said, his steps unconsciously speeding up, “It might trigger your memory. But don't try to steal my treasures. No matter what.”

“Treasures?” She cocked her head, not missing his use of the plural.

He wasn't about to explain, though. “Don't assume that stealing someone's treasure is harmless. It's not.” He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, eyes fixed ahead. “How would you feel to have your most powerful desires taken from you?”

Sumire didn't reply. Out of the corner of his eye, Akira saw her mouth open slightly, then close again. She looked down. “Isn't it hurting you, though?”

“So what? Then I just have to be stronger.”

“Senpai...”

He wouldn't let her finish that thought. “You don't want this reality to change, do you? You and the rest of the Phantom Thieves—none of you are on my side. Not even Akechi,” he added bitterly.

“We're not _against_ you. And Goro...” Sumire trailed off, but Akira waited for her to finish. “...he cares about you in his own way.”

Akira didn't answer that. Akechi had always held him at arm's length, and Akira was done expecting anything different from him. Akira didn't need his affection. He just didn't like seeing the person Akechi had become, drowning in the lukewarm waters of complacency— _that_ was what really pissed him off. Akechi had always been the one to push him to accept nothing less than harsh reality, to refuse to be controlled—and now what, he was just giving in as soon as it got good for him?

Akira stopped again, and came to stand in front of Sumire. He looked her straight in the eye. “Are you going to accept this fake reality? Are you fine knowing that someone else created it for you, to replace the real world?”

Sumire took his gaze for a moment, but after a moment, crumbled. “I'm just not sure I can believe this one is fake.” When she saw his hardening expression, she quickly continued, “None of us want to be under the Counselor's thumb, and we've already agreed to keep investigating him. But I just can't bring myself to believe that it's okay to tear away the happiness everyone has worked so hard for. Their efforts aren't fake.”

That hit Akira like a slap in the face, and made him back down. “...They're still being manipulated.” But the words didn't come out as firmly as he'd thought they would.

“So then we deal with the one doing the manipulating,” Sumire did earnestly, reaching out to gently touch his elbow. “Just because a castle was built by a tyrant doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the castle.”

What she said sounded reasonable, she sounded reasonable. Akira didn't know how to argue back. And most of all, the knowledge that there was no way back anyway was grinding down on him.

“Even if things are different now,” Sumire said slowly, eyes flicking downward, "nothing is stopping you from making friends with everyone all over again."

Reasonable. It was all reasonable.

But it had never been about _friendship_ for Akira. Through the course of many iterations, Maruki had presented him with _friendship_ over and over—people to talk to and hang out with. But it wasn't the same. He'd approached every single one of his connections seeking to help them, and it wasn't liking each other that had kept them together, it was sharing a common goal. If they didn't need him, they'd never be able to form the kinds of bonds they'd once had.

Akira looked down at the ground. “No. It's fine.”

But Sumire didn't back down. “Of course it's not going to happen overnight. It just takes time. Spend enough time together, and no matter how impossible it seems now, you can reach an understanding.” She fiddled with her fingers a bit, a habit that strongly reminded Akira of the old Sumire. “I never thought I'd be friends with Goro. He just seemed incomprehensible to me. But with time, I came to understand him.”

Akira don't reply right away. Maybe she was right. Maybe hers was the natural view, and his take on relationships was too transactional. Just another way in which she was doing a better job being Joker than him. Her whole existence was an attack on him, and the fact that even he wanted her made it worse. He remembered how Akechi had used to go on about thesis and antithesis, and Akira had gone to read up on Hegel to figure out what the hell he'd been talking about. It hadn't really made sense to him before, but now, he was starting to feel like he got it.

“...Yeah. Maybe,” was all he replied.

x x x

When Akira got back to his apartment that night—he didn't look at the clock, but he assumed it was real late—he passed out immediately. He was probably just tired.

He checked his phone immediately after waking up the next morning out of pure habit. In the past, he'd always woken up to a million new messages from all sorts of people, but now, he just had a whole bunch of messages from one person.

Maruki.

Scowling, Akira tossed his phone aside and tried to go back to sleep, but he was already too awake. He picked up his phone again and looked at the messages.

**I'm sorry about what happened when we spoke, but there's more I need to say.**

**Please respond.**

**Time really is of the essence. I know you won't let your personal anger toward me cloud your judgment when it comes to something this important.**

**I'm going to keep trying, you know.**

**Please respond, Akira Kurusu.**

_Is he a god or a rejected ex-girlfriend?_ Akira thought with a sigh. He tossed down his phone for the moment. If it was so important, why not just whisk Akira into the Metaverse on his whim instead of sending a storm of texts?

Despite losing his temper the other day, Akira wasn't going to be stupid, here. He needed all the information he could get. He tossed down his phone to go have a shower and get dressed before flopping down on the floor at the low table and calling Maruki.

“Oh, you returned my messages,” Maruki said. “Hold on, do you mind if I come over? I'd rather speak in person.”

At least he kept up the farce of asking permission. “Whatever.”

As soon as the words were out of Akira's mouth, the world wobbled around him, and then he reappeared sitting in the exact same apartment, except now Maruki was sitting across from him at the table, and there was a bowl of snacks and some juice boxes on the table between them. Apparently this was what Maruki meant by “coming over.”

“You left so suddenly last time, I didn't get the chance to finish explaining,” Maruki said as he reached out for a biscuit, wrapper crinkling as he went on. He looked up from his biscuit at Akira. “Have one, if you like.”

Akira reluctantly took a wrapped cracker. He actually was hungry, since he hadn't had breakfast.

Maruki thankfully skipped all pleasantries and got straight to the point. “As I said last time, the world right now is unstable. But I have a plan to deal with that, and I need your help.” He gave Akira a very earnest look, which Akira avoided. “You're aware that you have a Palace,” Maruki continued as he crunched on his biscuit. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

Maruki nodded. “And you understand that it's different from other Palaces?”

Akira nodded slowly. He did have a vague sense of that, though he couldn't give a specific reason why.

“Because of your special circumstances,” Maruki explained, “your Palace is not merely your own. Have you ever gotten a sense that your Palace is perhaps larger than you know?”

After another pause, Akira nodded again. “Yeah. I don't know where it ends.”

“When you defeated Yaldabaoth in the original timeline, you called on the power of The World, and the hearts of the people seeking freedom. Summoning The World requires a direct connection to the collective unconscious. In effect, you are the world, and the world is you.”

Akira narrowed his eyes. “I haven't been able to summon Satanael since then, though.”

“That doesn't mean your connection has been severed.” Maruki popped the straw off a juice box. “It just means the collective unconscious is not united in that direction right now. It's not so easy to tell the souls of the masses what to do, you know.”

Akira bit back the remark, _it seems like you've been doing it just fine._

“What I'm saying is,” Maruki stuck his straw into his apple juice, “your Palace contains not only your own mind and memory, but the collective memory of the whole world, as it was at the time when you defeated Yaldabaoth." Maruki looked up at him. “I want to use your Palace to reset the world.”

Akira stared at him, the gears of his mind slowly turning. He wasn't going to allow himself to be hopeful about this. There had to be a catch. “I thought you said there's no going back.”

“There isn't any going back.“ Maruki slurped his juice. “This isn't the same thing as undoing an existing world to return to the original. We would simply be creating a new world that's as close to the old one as possible. A photocopy of sorts.”

“As close as possible?”

“Yes. It's ultimately a world based on memory and perception, which are always flawed. But your Palace was founded specifically for the goal of preserving your true reality, and so when you gather together the collective unconscious under that banner, they compare and contrast their respective perceptions in order to construct something as close to the truth was possible. Rather similar to the way science works, if you think about it—sharing a collective pool of knowledge into the single great body of human progress.”

Akira started reaching up to fiddle with his hair, caught himself, and dropped his hand to the table in front of him. He didn't want to give Maruki any material to read. He settled for chewing the inside of his cheek, instead. “How is that just not brainwashing everyone again?”

“You could certainly see it that way,” Maruki acknowledged easily. “But only if you see the present reality as the default. You could also see it as undoing their brainwashing, turning back the clock, so to speak.”

But it wasn't turning back the clock. Akira remembered what Lavenza had said. You can't put the chick back in the egg. “My memory isn't the same as who they really are, though.”

“You're an incredibly perceptive young man, and your memories are as close to reality as you can get. And do keep in mind that you're merely the controlling agent, while the rest of the collective unconscious lies beneath it. It's not just you.”

Was he? Was he really that perceptive? Wasn't he just lying to himself again? 

“So...” Akira's hand dropped on the table and tapped slowly. He wanted to fully understand what it was Maruki was proposing. “If a tree fell in the forest and there was no one there to hear it back in the original world, then now that sound would be made to have never existed?”

“The world was already like that,” Maruki waved a dismissive hand. “Haven't you ever heard of the observer effect? Consciousness precedes matter, that's just the basics of...” he trailed off, and then gave an awkward laugh. “Whoops, aha-ha, forget I said any of that. That's not something you have to worry about.”

Akira was hardly paying attention to Maruki casually slipping the secrets of the universe, though, eyes on the table as he considered. “Why are you doing this? And why do you even need my consent for this? Aren't you omnipotent?”

Maruki sighed, looking mildly offended. “First of all, as I said before, the world in its current state is unstable, and the most reliable way to stabilize it would be to simply import the content of your Palace, as-is. And I do need your consent for that. Ethical issues aside—” Akira eye-rolled—“your Palace is dictated by your mental state, and your personal loathing for me prevents me from sending in my units to hook things up. If I have your permission, then you'll...let down the security system, so to speak.”

That did make sense, based on what Akira knew.

“It won't be exactly the same as the original world,” Maruki leaned forward as he spoke, “but it will be very close to it. Far than the current world. I believe this would basically fulfill your desires.”

Akira considered for another long moment. After all this struggle, Maruki was suggesting he just hand over everything Akira had been fighting him for all this time. It didn't feel right. He _knew_ it wasn't right.

“I remember once you told me...each time you remember something, it overwrites the old memory with your recollection, and that's how false memories are made. And that nobody really sees reality to begin with, since it's all filtered through perception.” He raised his eyes from the table and looked straight at Maruki. “How can you say that any of my memories are a reflection of the truth?”

“Kurusu,” Maruki lifted a hand to his glasses, adjusting them with a look that let slip just a hint of the arrogance he'd grown since becoming a god, “I'm going to make a confession. The truth is...” he made a big dramatic pause, “...I've never been a very good counselor.”

Akira snorted, and Maruki responded with a sheepish smile. “I'm usually better at maintaining boundaries than I am with you! But it was really hard for me to put up that professional wall to create one-sided relationships with people. In that regard, you're far my superior.”

Akira twitched, and his hand rose to his hair, fiddling.

“People show a special side to you that they don't to anyone else,” Maruki continued, “but they show special sides to everyone. Everyone is different in different circumstances—speaking with social superiors versus your family or a lover, or a stranger...all of these are real. What you remember is not at all false, it's simply a piece of the truth. Humans are all a collection of masks with nothing on the inside, defined by our relationships to the world. You might think there's some fundamental truth to be found at the core, but there isn't. It's all flexible, depending on the situation. And...” he looked at Akira over his glasses, “if you have all the information at hand—if you catalogue every single one of their relationships, you can know someone in their entirety, and fully understand them in every way. Your Palace is a repository of that information, and we're merely taking advantage of that.”

Akira didn't reply, just looking down at the table with one hand in his hair. “You've never told me,” he said after a long moment of silence, “what happens if I just conquer your Palace and change your heart.”

Maruki laughed out loud, as if he were sincerely surprised and amused by the suggestion. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, wiping one eye. “I don't mean to belittle you. But you'll never accomplish that, as long as you're alive. It would be best if you gave up on that idea sooner rather than later.”

Akira raised his chin to stare at Maruki. He couldn't say a word.

Maruki continued. “I recognize that this is a lot to lay on you suddenly, but we don't have all the time in the world. If I'm to carry this plan out, then I need the time to connect your Palace to the collective unconscious, and everything must be set up to go by February 3rd, for reasons I'm sure you understand. So...” he pulled out his cell phone and checked the date—the god of the new reality and he apparently couldn't even remember the date—“I can give you a week to think about it. But I'll need your answer by then.”

Maruki stood up, then clapped his hands with an “Oh!” as if he'd just remembered. “And please don't tell the Phantom Thieves about this. I don't think they would take kindly to this plan.”

Akira didn't answer that either, just looking up at him. He wanted to make Maruki sweat a little about this, at least.

“Well,” Maruki nodded, “I have a lot of things to do right now, so I'll be seeing you another time. I'll leave the snacks here for you.” And then suddenly the world wobbed around them again, and Akira was sitting at the table in what he assumed was the real world again, but the snacks were still there—including the empty wrapper Maruki had left.

Akira stared at the bowl of snacks for a moment, then smacked it over on its side, spilling its contents, and flopped onto his back on the floor.

x x x

The next few times Sumire called together the Phantom Thieves to explore Maruki's Palace, Akira didn't go.

He knew he should. But he just didn't want to look at his phone. If he needed food, he could go to the convenience store. He didn't bother cooking anymore. The times when he'd loved doing it seemed very far away.

He spent a lot of time lying around on the living room floor in this apartment that was supposed to be his but didn't feel like his, combing through the bookshelf and staring at the books but hardly reading them.

Maruki had packed this bookshelf full of all the same one's Akira had had in Leblanc. Akira was used to reading whatever books friends recommended to him, or whatever books he could read that would start a good conversation with someone, so his collection had always been all over the place, from the action or sports manga Ryuji liked to Makoto's studying recommendations to magazine's Ann had left over.

And then there were the philosophy books. Akira picked up the one that was leaning cover-out on the front of the bookshelf at eye level, as if it wanted to be read. He frowned, not recalling having left it there, and picked it up. He remembered it had been a favourite of Akechi's. Akira quirked a wry smile. Akechi had always fancied himself an Ubermensch, after all.

Akira hadn't necessarily read all these books all cover-to-cover, but he'd at the very least skimmed them and read the cheat sheets. He'd tried reading Hegel after that first meeting with Akechi, when he'd smiled and nodded and pretended he knew what the fuck Akechi was on about and then he'd gone home and Googled it so he could impress Akechi the next time they met. The number of fancy philosophy books he'd read to try to impress Akechi—

_I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: **ye have still chaos in you**._

_Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself._

_Lo! I show you **the last man.**_

“ _ **What is love**? What is creation? What is longing? **What is a star**?”—so asketh the last man and blinketh._

_The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest._

“ _ **We have discovered happiness** ”—say the last men, and blink thereby._

Akira tossed the book across the room, rolled over onto his face and spent the rest of the day sleeping.

x x x

As much as Akira just wanted to fall into bed and never get up, Sumire kept texting him, asking what was going on, so eventually he pulled himself together, cobbled together something about having had food poisoning, and then cleaned himself up and dragged himself to Leblanc to meet up before infiltrating Maruki's Palace.

Sumire greeted him with a warm smile, which he returned as sincerely as he could, but once the other Phantom Thieves started coming in, he smiled and nodded and them, and they greeted him in return, but he quietly placed himself to the side, leaning back against the bar counter, as they got their meeting going.

Through lowered lids, out of the corner of his eye so it wouldn't look like he was staring, Akira watched Akechi.

It still felt strange to see him smile like that. It wasn't the Akechi that Akira remembered at all. But Maruki had said he wanted to be this person. Not like Akira really believed he could trust Maruki. But he wasn't sure what to believe anymore.

Akira let the Phantom Thieves' chatter go in one ear and out the other— _Featherman_ came up at one point, and everyone had already seen the full new season together, of course they had, what did that sort of old promise mean now? Nothing.

It was all so trivial. _This_ was trivial. It was absolutely, madly, petty to be so fixated on this thing, when there was the literal fate of the world hanging in the balance—to be fixated on the way Akechi's eyes sometimes flicked toward Yusuke, that sort of dazed smile Yusuke sometimes got on his face.

It would be absolutely ridiculous to be jealous when he had fucked the both of them before in various timelines, and it wasn't like he wanted to be the one sitting there across the table from Akechi looking like an idiot. That entire sort of relationship was absolutely sickening to him. What did they even have in common—daddy issues? Did they roleplay that? _Mmm, validate me, daddy~!_ What a laugh.

Akira was truly, honestly, and sincerely happy for the both of them, if they were enjoying themselves together. There was nothing wrong with it, and it was totally understandable, considering that Akechi would have seen dead, it had been over a year for him, and they'd never really had a real relationship anyway. That whole thing had been based on altered memories and about as real as a cheap plastic toy gun from Big Bang Burger, anyway. The real Akechi would have— The real Akechi would have—

Akira was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of his cell phone ringing. Seeing who was calling, he excused himself from Leblanc, stepping outside to answer the phone.

“Yeah?”

“I do hate to press you,” Maruki said over the phone, “But we don't have all the time in the world. Have you reached a decision?”

Akira exhaled a long, white breath into the winter air. “I'll help you with your plan. Tell me what I have to do.”


	28. Forever My Dear Nemesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna finally get to Big Akira Events this chapter, but I forgot I have to do this first, derp derp. And then it just turned monster long. I should probably edit more, but I've poured enough hours into this monster chapter, I want to move on, lol. I'll come back to it later.

Goro pulled on his slacks, casting about for his button-up, and saw Yusuke, who was pulling on his own pants, tap his foot on the ground—over Goro's shirt. Classic Yusuke. He wouldn't pick up the shirt, and he'd think he was being helpful by pointing it out. Knowing it was useless to even make a snide remark, Goro bent down and got his shirt, while Yusuke continued to do up his belt.

It was fucking freezing in Yusuke's dorm room—they were really cheaping out on heating, and even Yusuke the Nudist would immediately get dressed again after sex.

“You're not going to stay over?” Yusuke asked, though Goro always answered the same way.

“Sleeping on the floor kills my back.”

“It's warmer at Leblanc.” Seemingly a topic change, but Goro got that he meant, _why don't we just fuck at Leblanc instead?_

“Barely. And Morgana's always there.”

“I don't mind,” Yusuke replied with a shrug as he dropped down to sit on top of his mussed-up futon, sprawled out in that gangly way of his.

“Not everyone is as blithely unconcerned about their reputation as you.”

“I'm not sure Morgana even has an understanding of what sex is. There was that one time during shadow negotiation—”

“Don't remind me.”

“—and I was curious, so I looked up the methodology online and checked his sex. Despite his insistence he's a man, Morgana does not, in fact, have genitalia at all. How strange none of the other Phantom Thieves have noticed.”

Goro paused in buttoning up his shirt and just gave Yusuke a look. “You looked at Morgana's—” He shook his head and swallowed a snicker. He wasn't about to say it out loud or anything, but he found Yusuke's eccentricities rather charming. At the very least, he wasn't boring, and he wasn't stupid. He was just an idiot. “That cat can identify as whatever the hell he wants, I still don't want him watching us fuck.”

“I don't think Mr. Sakura will mind,” Yusuke jumped subjects again, following his own mental train of thought instead of any rational thread of conversation, as usual. Unfortunately, Goro was used to keeping up with him.

Goro didn't say anything, just tucked in his shirt and picked up his blazer, patting it off before shrugging into it. “...I just want to keep private things private.” Then he picked up his winter jacket and turned back to look at Yusuke before leaving.

Yusuke was usually not in the least mannerly; there had been more than one occasion when he had dropped Goro immediately after (or _during_ ) sex to grab his notepad and scribble something down, and then after twenty minutes of drawing he'd look up again and go, “Oh, you're still here?”

Not to say that Goro really minded. It would be far worse if Yusuke had been all clingy about it and insisting their relationship was more than it was. They had a certain unspoken understanding going on—no prying, no talking about it with the other Phantom Thieves, just taking care of business.

Or so he had thought.

Yusuke folded his legs on the futon and leaned back on his hands as he looked up at Goro. “Are you so worried about what Mr. Sakura thinks of you?”

“I don't care what Sojiro thinks of me,” Goro said with a roll of his eyes as he put on his winter jacket. “My hook-ups are just none of his business.”

“Am I a hook-up?” Yusuke immediately shot back at him. He didn't sound accusatory—he sounded like he was just asking a genuine question. Maybe he was. Or maybe he was just hiding whatever he felt. Goro had come to realize lately that just because Yusuke seemed like he let every single stupid thought fall out of his mouth, that didn't mean he did. He would babble endlessly about the most inappropriate things, and then get tight-lipped about others. It was hard to find rhyme or reason to it.

“Yes,” Goro replied bluntly. Might as well make it clear here and now.

“Hmm.” Yusuke's lids lowered slightly, but he showed nothing more. “Is it typical to cry in the arms of your hook-up? I would have thought that's reserved for a closer relationship.”

Goro flushed to his ears, and spun away from Yusuke. “I _told_ you not to bring that up.” He moved to the door, but Yusuke's voice brought him to a halt again.

“Is it because of Akira Kurusu?”

Goro froze on the spot, and when he didn't reply right away, Yusuke continued, “Were you in love with him?”

Goro let out a long sigh and rubbed his face. “Does it even matter? He died, I dealt with it, that's over.” This Akira Kurusu now was—almost someone else. Someone colder, someone harder. And Goro was fine with that, really. Having the figure from his memories reappear as perfectly as Goro had doubtless idealized him would have been another kind of torture. The Akira Kurusu he remembered holding him and whispering words of affection to him coming back to say _it's not your fault, I don't blame you—_ Goro would have fucking stabbed that person just to get him out of his sight, and then stabbed himself.

Goro had buried Akira Kurusu, and he'd buried the Goro Akechi who had caused his death. There was no going back to that.

“So you were in love with him.”

Goro turned back around to face Yusuke with an angry glare. Yusuke seemed to have no problem at all saying words like that, words that would get stuck halfway out of Goro's throat if he ever tried.

“If you want to know _so_ badly,” Goro snapped back at Yusuke, “Yes, I was. But like I said, it doesn't matter. It's over.”

“Is it?”

If Goro had had a little more self-control, a little more restraint, he would have just left the room right then. But unfortunately, this was a conversation he'd had with himself too many times to count, on late nights when he hadn't exhausted himself enough to sleep, and he was ready to dribble all his brain vomit out to the first person who asked. He had a whole speech ready in his head for moments like this, moments that never happened.

Except now, Yusuke was asking.

“It _is_ over,” Goro said flatly. “What does it matter how I felt about him? It was just all in my head, for all the good it did. Being around him made me _miserable._ Do you know what it's like to look at someone and realize they're everything you're not? That he pulled off everything I tried so hard to fake on pure instinct? The longer I was around him, the more it made me realize what a piece of shit I was. I didn't see him as a—” Goro waved a dismissive hand—“ _boyfriend_ or anything like that. I wanted to _consume_ him and take everything he had.”

Yusuke just tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “Love takes many forms.”

Caught between being mad and wanting to laugh at how ridiculous Yusuke was, Goro settled for snorting, then scowling. “My point is, I felt shitty when I was around him. I don't want to feel like that again.”

“So how do you feel when you're with me?”

“I feel like I want you to shut up,” Goro reached up with one socked foot to step on Yusuke's face, shoving his head backward, and Yusuke let himself be fall to the floor.

“I believe this is what Futaba likes to call 'tsundere behavior.'”

“Futaba is the last person who can give anyone _dating advice_.”

“So are we dating, then?” Yusuke grinned up at him from the floor.

“We're not _dating_.” This time, Goro really was leaving. “I like your dick, and that's all, Yusuke.” And then he left, closing the door a little harder than necessary.

x x x

On the train on the way back to Leblanc, all the things he hadn't said to Yusuke crowded his mind.

The real reason he didn't want to bring Yusuke over to Leblanc again.

The number of times he'd written out texts to Akira, then erased them before sending.

What Akira's shadow had said to him before the Phantom Thieves had left his palace.

When Goro walked in the door of Leblanc that night, he was struck with a sense of deja-vu, as he always was, these days. His head turned to the right on its own, expecting to see someone there, even though the shop was dark, and he knew Sojiro had gone home.

Impulsively, Goro sat down at a spot in front of the bar for no particular reason.

When he brought Yusuke here, every time, he just thought of Akira. If he closed his eyes for just a second he'd hear a different, higher voice, and feel hands with shorter fingers and a tighter grip. It was something about—the smell of coffee, or the dust in the attic. He wasn't sure.

After only a few moments, Goro sighed and slid off the stool again, going up to his bedroom. As he was passing his bookshelves—filled with schoolbooks, mystery novels, books on philosophy, that _Featherman_ spinoff manga—his eye caught on his Gray Pigeon figure, the one Ryuji had given him. It was so dusty up in the attic, he had to clean this thing constantly. Goro plucked a tissue from the bedside table, picked up the figure from the shelf to give it a casual dusting, wiped the shelf underneath it, placed it back, and tossed the tissue in the trash.

He stared at the figure an extra moment, caught in that deja-vu again, then shook his head.

x x x

Futaba hung out at Leblanc a lot—it was her regular haunt, being close to home and a place she could get free food and coffee. Sometimes she would just sit in a booth and read or be on her laptop, but often enough, she would invite herself upstairs and play Goro's video games.

Goro's video games, which Futaba had bought him and demanded he play, mind you. If she just wanted to play them herself, she could have just taken them home, but no. After buying a brand-new copy of _Sentai Hero Fighters,_ the crossover fighting game that included a bunch of characters from a number of _Featherman_ series, she left it at Leblanc, and every time she wanted to play it, she'd just barge in and do so.

So when Goro came home after school that day, he was not surprised to see her sitting on the chair in his attic room in front of the TV. Knees drawn up in front of her and controller in hand, she demanded, “Play me.”

“Play online,” Goro shot back.

“I wanna play with you.”

Goro couldn't even sigh, he just gave in like he always did, taking off his shoes and jacket and setting aside his bag and blazer on the couch before he took a seat on the chair next to Futaba and picked up the second controller. Futaba took them to the character select screen, picking Green Toucan, as usual. Goro selected Red Hawk, also as usual.

“I always wondered,” Futaba said as she flipped through the stage select. She always chose the stage, Goro didn't get a say. “Why d'you always pick Red Hawk when Gray Pigeon is your favorite Featherman?”

Goro scowled at the screen. “Gray Pigeon is _not_ my favorite Featherman.”

“Says the guy who wrote an essay about why Gray Pigeon is the best Featherman for his essay assignment every year of middle school.”

“I never should have told you about that.”

After selecting the space station stage, the match started, and Futaba continued talking while they both started moving their thumbs. “So why's Gray Pigeon your favorite.”

Goro scowled at the screen and tried to focus on the fight—Futaba was, sad as it was to admit, a lot better than him at this game, and he needed all of his concentration for it. He didn't answer until the round was over—her victory. “I liked the character in _middle school._ I was just a stupid kid who liked edgy villains, that's all.”

“The _Featherman_ villains are cool, though. Like Osagiri.”

“What?” Goro's head snapped up, controller falling to his lap. “You like _Osagiri?_ After the events of the final season? Maybe she seemed interesting at the beginning, when her motives were mysterious, but after the big reveal—” Goro shook his head. “They completely dropped the ball.”

“No no no no,” and now Futaba was ignoring her controller, too, dropping her legs off the chair to turn toward Goro. “That was the best part. She was just doing it all for science! Just for the pursuit of knowledge, at any cost! It was way better than in the original game, where it was basically just 'cos she was evil or whatever.”

“She was a classic villain in the original game,” Goro turned to her. “They tried too hard to make her sympathetic, and it came out cheesy.”

“ _You're_ the one who was going on about how much you love moral ambiguity. So then you should like the new _Featherman_ better.”

“There's a place for pure evil villains, if they're done right.”

“It's not _realistic,_ it's just kiddy,” Futaba snorted. Her usual timidity had evaporated, as it always did when you got her going on one of her pet subjects. “Nobody's pure evil.”

“There are definitely pure evil people in the world,” Goro muttered, turning away to lean back in his chair.

“...I don't think so,” Futaba said after a pause, looking down at her feet as she fiddled her big toes together.

“What about your uncle?” Goro shot back sourly.

“I mean...I hate him, but he's not evil. It's not the same.”

Goro fell silent. He wished he could be as generous as she was.

“I think everyone has the opportunity to do bad stuff and good stuff...” Futaba said, then trailed into silence as well.

They hadn't talked much about what Goro had done, since they had restored her mother's mind.

When Goro, Sumire and Morgana had first infiltrated Futaba's palace to steal her heart—with Futaba's permission—he hadn't even known she was Wakaba Isshiki's daughter.

But then they had encountered the shadow of her mother there—a perfect copy the woman herself had placed there in anticipation of an attempt on her life—and Wakaba Isshiki had immediately recognized Goro and exposed him as her murderer.

At that point, all Goro had been so desperate to figure out a way out, a way to fix things. He'd been sure that Sumire or Morgana would tell Futaba, and Futaba would report him to the cops or rat out to Shido that he'd been Metaverse, _someone,_ maybe someone else with the persona ability, would find him. Goro hadn't really been thinking straight, ever since he'd bailed on his apartment, Shido and his whole life as the ace detective to become a fugitive in the Metaverse. He'd been convinced that if he didn't fix the situation with Isshiki, then he was going to die. Constantly looking over your shoulder for assassins and sleeping just a few hours a night for weeks on end would do that to you.

Goro had figured out how to restore Wakaba Isshiki's mind, based on some documents he'd originally stolen from her lab and other things he'd remembered seeing inside her Palace when he'd initially erased what he'd believed to be her shadow. If not for his quick thinking, they might well have torn down Futaba's palace without realizing that they could transplant Isshiki's shadow into her body, which had been rotting away in a mental institution.

Goro and Wakaba Isshiki had given each other a wide berth since then. She had asked Goro to not tell Futaba about the sorts of experiments she'd been engaged in—on Goro or anyone else—while in return, Wakaba would not tell anyone that Goro had been the one to induce her mental shutdown. Shortly after that, Sojiro had offered Goro a place to stay at Leblanc, on the condition that he would work there a few nights a week—something he certainly would not have offered had he known the truth.

Upon discovering her mother was back, after Futaba had finished crying, all she'd said to Goro was, “Thank you,” to which Goro had replied, “I owed it to you anyway,” and that was all the conversation they'd had about it.

“Maybe,” Goro replied after a while, “but some people will just have a natural tendency to go one way or another, due to upbringing, or genetics—leading to acts of violence, manipulative behavior, lack of empathy, or what-have-you.” As soon as that was out of his mouth, Goro realized how bitter it sounded, and he snapped his lips shut before letting out a sigh. Hands slack in the controller over his lap, he looked away towards his desk, at the battered old ray gun lying there. His old piece of sentimentality. A tool for a hero. “Do you think—” he began, then shook his head and picked up the controller again. “You wanted to play, let's play the game. I'll beat you this round.”

But Futaba caught him. “Do I think what?”

“It really doesn't matter.”

“C'mon.”

“Are we going to play this game, or aren't we?”

“C'mon c'mon.” Futaba scooched her chair up beside his and bumped his shoulder with her own. “Tell meeeeee.” She shoved at him annoyingly.

Goro sighed and brought his hand up by his cheek to rub it, an excuse to hide his face. “...Do you think I'm a bad person?”

“No,” Futaba answered without a moment's hesitation. “You've done bad stuff and good stuff, that's all. Like Gray Pigeon.”

Goro closed his eyes and looked away. She was wrong, but he wasn't going to argue. He'd wanted to hear her say that, and it had been manipulative of him to ask. He knew she was just the kind of person who wouldn't be judgmental, even when she should be. And he wanted her to keep being like that. Even if Isshiki had never asked him to keep her work a secret from Futaba, Goro wouldn't have told her anyway—Futaba deserved to have that kind of uncomplicated affection in her life. She didn't need to know about the shit that swirled around just out of sight. And that was the only reason he hadn't fucking murdered her uncle instead of just stealing his heart. He wanted her to believe there were heroes in the world, and not only dirty avengers.

“Let's play another round,” Goro said as he opened his eyes, looking at the Red Hawk on screen, and this time, Futaba picked up her controller again.

Despite how often Goro used Red Hawk, he still wasn't any good at playing him and Futaba kept winning. But Goro dug in and kept demanding more matches to try again. He really had to study, but he kept playing until it looked like Futaba was getting tired, then walked her home.

“Mission complete, Gray Pigeon,” she saluted him at her door in place of a goodbye. “You're dismissed.”

He smiled wryly back at her. “Roger.”

x x x

During his time in hiding from Shido, Goro hadn't been able to go to school, and he also hadn't been terribly keen on studying at the time, either. He'd spent most of his time holed up in Leblanc, watching old reruns of _Featherman_ and trying to focus on all the ways he was going to torture and murder Shido to distract himself from the urge to hang himself from the roof beam. Futaba had come over a lot during that time—probably just because she'd been too anxious to go anywhere else, and Goro had been available to bother at all hours of day, so she'd taken advantage, and he'd let her. Or maybe she'd mistakenly seen him as a sort of kindred spirit. At any rate, the result was that he'd spent the better part of those few months getting good at video games and not studying.

So when he'd eventually transferred to Shujin late in the year, after Shido's defeat—under Sojiro's insistence—he'd been wildly behind. At this point, Goro was resigned to taking a year off after graduation to study more for university entrance exams, but that didn't mean he could stand to get bad grades. When Makoto had found him in the school library with his nose to the grindstone, she'd invited him to study together with her and Haru. Goro had refused, obviously, but then her and Haru had shown up like a curse while he'd been studying at Leblanc that night, they'd wound up studying together anyway, and it had become a regular thing.

So that was where they were now: the three of them sitting in a booth at Leblanc, books all over the table and in full study mode. When all the Phantom Thieves got together, they had a tendency to chat too much, but with just the three of them, they actually got some decent studying done.

“You forgot to carry the one,” Makoto glanced at Goro's notebook to point out.

“I did carry it, I just didn't mark it down,” Goro shot back.

“They take away marks if you don't show your work,” Haru interjected from across the table.

Goro clicked his tongue and wrote it in. He'd always been in the habit of figuring it out in his head and jumping to the end—he never actually read the books for reading assignments, either. Why bother when you can just get the gist of it from the internet, then bullshit your way through an essay? It was a waste of time to do anything else. Makoto's meticulous, grindy attitude toward schoolwork irked him on a fundamental level.

The table was mostly quite thankfully silent for a long time, until out of the blue, Makoto said, “If this whole reality is fake, then is there any point in studying? I mean, what if we take the exams, and then all our effort is undone anyway by a drastic change to reality?”

Goro raised an eyebrow, but kept his face on his notebook as he replied, “You're the last person I expected to hear that from.”

“Why's that?” she turned to him.

Goro rolled his eyes. “I'm not sure it's physically possible for you to stop studying.”

“I don't study just for the sake of studying,” she shot back at him, tapping her pencil against her notebook. “I do it because I have a goal in mind.”

“Yeah sure, your goal to suck up to every authority figure around,” Goro muttered, but not quiet enough that Makoto wouldn't hear.

Makoto, however, gave as well as she got. “In psychology,” she said primly, “I believe that's what's known as _projecting_.”

Goro snapped his pen down against his notebook and turned his head just slightly toward Makoto, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Excuse me?”

“Are you going to pretend you don't turn on your best smile around teachers, or my sister? It's like flipping a switch with you.”

“I don't actually _care_ what they think, it just makes it easier to get what you want when you have a positive relationship with people in power.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I think,” Haru began, seemingly having ignored their bickering to ponder the initial question, “that it's a good idea to study now, if we don't know what's going to happen. We might as well be prepared. And besides...” she paused another long moment, as if carefully considering her words, “I think this one is the real reality.”

“What makes you say that?” Makoto asked her.

“Well, can't we just trust in our senses right now? Even if the world used to be a different way like Akira says, that doesn't mean it's not real now. This is the world we all remember, the one we share together now. I believe in this one.” Haru paused and looked down at her notebook. “And I just don't believe the Goro sitting in front of me would kill my father, in any world.”

Goro very carefully didn't say anything until he was sure he had the right words, eyes still down on his notebook. He'd been trying to steer the conversation away from this by baiting Makoto, but he knew he couldn't avoid it forever.

“Thank you,” he said after a while, and that was sincere, at least. He wasn't going to tell Haru any lies. Then he went back to studying.

x x x

“ _I never thought you were scared of the truth.”_

The words Akira's shadow had whispered in his ear hadn't left his mind since they'd gone into his Palace. On the way out, the shadow had stopped him and said he wanted to speak with Goro alone. Goro had shaken him off without thinking, but he'd felt Shadow Akira's eyes on his back the whole time after that, as they'd walked out of his Palace.

The Thieves had agreed they weren't going to try to conquer Akira's Palace, but it wasn't like Goro couldn't just go in there. It seemed clear enough that the Palace was as safe as they got, since Akira had no ill will to them—and well, Goro could handle himself, anyway. So a few days after the Thieves has accidentally entered his Palace, Goro decided to go in alone.

When he stepped back into the hall where soft jazz played in the background, he sort of expected Shadow Akira might come to him, but the shadow wasn't there, so Goro figured he'd explore the place a little instead.

Walking along the pathways decorated with sets and statues, a certain statue caught his eye, so he took the winding path toward it to get a closer look. A little ways from the statue, he noticed two figures—cognitions of Haru and Futaba—standing with their backs to him, looking up at the statue ahead of him. The statue was of Loki. Goro stopped where he was and listened to their conversation.

“Kinda freaky, huh,” the cognitive Futaba commented. “Even after Akechi joined us, seeing this guy always reminds me of what happened in the engine room.”

“Yeah... It kind of makes me uncomfortable.”

“'Cause he's always like _wryyyy_ when he summons it?” Futaba did an exaggerated imitation of Goro in his black mask outfit, with accompanying Dio Brando pose.

That got a giggle out of the cognitive Haru, but it was a little weak. “That's part of it. I think if he was just angry, that would make sense to me. But looking at this...” she looked up at the statue, “It seems like he has some kind of ironic detachment, like he sees everything as a joke or a game, even the worst atrocities. And sometimes...I get that sense from Akechi, too. He seems like...someone I could never understand. And I...don't really want to, honestly.”

“...Mmm.” The cognitive Futaba didn't reply right away. “I get that. I mean, I feel like I can kinda get him, too, but just a little. He scares me too, honestly.” She sighed. “Akira's kind of amazing for getting along with him so well.”

“Akira can get along with anyone.”

“True, true.”

Goro decided to leave before the cognitions could notice his presence.

He went around, observing the other cognitions of the Phantom Thieves as well as various figures that Goro knew as friends of Sumire's, watching their behavior, chatting with some. They all felt...right. These weren't like the usual skewed perceptions you saw in Palaces. Where things were different, it seemed like the result of different events, as opposed to the bias of the Palace owner. Maybe they'd show the cracks if you spoke with them for longer, but they very much seemed like the people Goro knew. And as he explored Akira's Palace, Goro's feeling that Akira was right, and that the world they lived in was all wrong, only grew.

This was the fact that he'd been avoiding since Akira's initial return. Being around Akira, who should have been dead, forced him to acknowledge the vague sense of _wrongness_ that he'd been carrying for a long time. Not only since Akira's reappearance—since long before that. But Goro had avoided thinking about it because he'd been too busy wallowing in his own misery and thinking about Shido. Even if the Phantom Thieves had had a dozen other fires to put out, even if the Counselor had been turning their minds from the truth, Goro was sure that if he'd really _wanted_ to, he could have broken through the lies and figured out what was really going on. But he hadn't. And he was mad at himself for continuing to avoid the truth, even when it had been thrust in his face.

Distracted by his thoughts as he walked, Goro didn't realize he had approached a cognitive version of Leblanc until he was right in front of the door. At a glance, it seemed just like the place he was familiar with. Figuring he might as well check it out, he pushed open the door and stepped in to see a cognitive version of himself sitting at the bar counter.

“Oh, hello, me,” the cognition turned to him and waved, a familiar smirk on his face. “I was thinking you might show up.”

Well, this might be instructive. Goro approached his cognition, and the cognition gestured to the stool beside him. “Take a seat, we might as well chat.” The cognition turned back to the bar and pushed a steaming latte over to him, while he brought a second closer to himself. There was no barista to be seen.

Accepting the latte—Goro was no stranger to eating Metaverse food—Goro took a sip. It was good, and tasted deeply nostalgic in an odd way.

“So you've looked around the place,” the cognition said as he set down his cup. “You recognize that this place is a reflection of the original reality?”

“It does seem so, but it's not as if I've investigated it particularly deeply,” Goro said as he put down his own cup. “There could easily be many discrepancies.”

“Oh, true enough. Kurusu does try to be as faithful to reality as possible, though. And he's perceptive about people. I think his cognitions are about as close to the real thing as you can get.”

“Hmm.” Goro looked down at his cup, then let his eyes slide sideways toward the cognition. If he was going to look for discrepancies, then the version of himself was clearly the best place to start. If this was the version of himself that Akira believed to be the real one, Goro wanted to know how they were different. “You call him by his surname.”

“Well, of course.” The cognition leaned against the counter and turned toward him. “We've never been that close.”

That was what Akira had said, after all. “Why not? You don't like him?”

The cognition faced forward again, taking his mug in both gloved hands as if warming them and looking down at his drink. “I do like him, to be honest. Though I wouldn't tell him that.” He snorted. “He'd let it go to his head right away. He thinks _everyone_ loves him. Arrogant prick.” He picked up his latte and took a sip, setting it down before continuing. “But just as much as I like him...I hate him.” The cognition turned to Goro again. “Don't you?”

Goro's lips pulled tight, and he looked away, down at the counter. “I used to.” Akira's death had changed everything. After weeks and months of chasing himself around the inside of his own head, Goro had wound up wringing every single drop of stupid, overly-competitive, self-conscious, self-absorbed hate for Akira out of himself, and upon scraping the bottom of that seething vat of shit, Goro had found something else entirely.

“So you're not close, and you hate him,” Goro said, turning the conversation back to the cognition. “But you joined the Phantom Thieves, in the end?”

“Well...our interests aligned.” The cognition fiddled with the handle of his mug. “I wanted to break out of the fake world Maruki had created for us, and so did he.”

“You trust Akira.”

“He's a trustworthy person. I never denied that.”

Goro sighed and looked back at his drink. Was he this much of a hassle to talk with? He recalled speaking with his own cognition in Sumire's Palace—somehow, this one was worse, though. Maybe because Akira's version of him was more on the nose. It was irritating.

Was this cognition really a perfect representation of him, though? Did Akira really know him that well? Could anyone know another human being that well?

“If he knows you this well,” Goro pointed out, “then you must have spend a considerable amount of time together.”

“Oh, sure, here and there. Darts, pool, going to the jazz club together. We spent the most time in the Metaverse together, of course. And well, we fucked a few times.” The cognition took another sip of his latte.

Goro couldn't resist asking. “So was he good?”

“Best sex of my life,” the cognition said flatly, and Goro spurted coffee out his nose.

“That guy is so fucking full of himself,” Goro muttered into his hand as he groped for a napkin to clean his face. The cognition primly handed him one. “Of course he would think I think so. Fuck.”

“Come on, you've got to admit his dick is great,” the cognition said with a smirk, “but of course, I'm only saying this because it's you. No point in keeping secrets from yourself, right? And besides, Kurusu wants to share information with you. None of the cognitions here will hide anything from you, unless it's in their personality to do so.”

Wiping his face, Goro gave a weak laugh. “Indeed.” He dropped the napkin on the counter. “Did you like spending time together, then?”

“Yes,” the cognition nodded. “I truly valued every moment I had with him, because I knew it wouldn't last.” He looked down at his cup with a somber expression. “I didn't want it to be over. But I knew I had to follow through. There was no backing out. I had to do it. I had to kill him, to get revenge on Shido. It was the only way.”

This was it. This was what Akira had kept pushing at him, over and over. “...How did it feel to kill Akira? Or the cognition of him, rather.”

The cognition's face suddenly went blank, and he seemed to be thinking for a long, long moment. “I don't know. I think it was probably really bad. But I don't really know.”

This was the first thing the cognition had said that pinged Goro as wrong. The cognition didn't know because Akira didn't know that. Or possibly he did know, but he was in denial about it. Goro wanted to press this spot more. He felt like here—this was where he might find the truth that Akira's shadow had accused him of not wanting to know.

The cognition shook his head and looked at Goro. “He's such an idiot. Even after I tried to kill him twice, he not only accepted my offer to take down Maruki together, he still wanted to spend time with me, too.” Leaning one elbow against the counter, he swirled his fingertip around the rim of his half-empty mug. “He was always chasing me down to meet at the Jazz Jin or go back to Leblanc for sex. It's not like I didn't enjoy it. But he's just so sentimental. Claiming he's in love with me when he barely knows me...” The soft smile dropped off his face, and the cognition stared down at his drink. “Even though I'm never going to love him back.”

Goro's fingers twitched on the counter, and he looked at the cognition out the corner of his eye. “Why not?”

“I don't know,” the cognition continued to swirl his finger around the rim of the mug. “Maybe it's him, maybe it's me, maybe it's the both of us. He just needs to give up on it already—I'm bad for him, and I'm just going to hurt him, in the end. He's got to be pretty fucked in the head, chasing after his murderer like a lovesick puppy. He's got plenty of girls in love with him, he should just pick one of them.”

The cognition's words were jarring in Goro's ears—because it didn't seem so far off from something he might say. He couldn't even say it was out of character for him. And yet, knowing that this was what Akira thought that Goro thought of him—if felt jarring. Off. If the cognition expressed uncertainty, did that mean Akira wasn't really sure? Were these Goro's ideas? Or were these Akira's? Ostensibly, all of this was Akira's mind, wasn't it?

“...Well, it's something of a relief that even Akira doesn't know everything there is to know about me,” Goro said as he turned back to the bar and picked up his mug for a sip.

“Oh, you mean there's some flaw in my cognition?” The cognition replied. “Well, not like I would trust your perception entirely, being that you continue to reject your memories. Also, I should let you know that this Palace doesn't belong only to Kurusu, so any flaws in perception will be minimized as much as possible.”

Goro looked toward the cognition with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“This is the Palace of the World,” the cognition waved a hand around him. “Kurusu connected with the collective unconscious in order to defeat Yaldabaoth, and his connection was never fully severed. This Palace contains the collective memories of the whole world. So this image of me,” the cognition gestured to himself, “is not only Kurusu's memory and perception, but that of everyone else in my life who was seen me and interacted with me. Even your own original memories are included in that.”

Goro's eyebrows came together. This was far beyond what he or any of the other Thieves had imagined. He hadn't even known such a thing was possible. But Goro wouldn't dismiss anything for sounding extraordinary, and he had every reason to believe what this cognition said was true. “If my own memories are included, then how do you not know how it felt to kill Akira?”

That seemed to strike the cognition, and he frowned, hand coming to his chin. “I can't say for sure, I can only speculate. But if Kurusu has cognitive distortions himself, and he feels strongly enough about them, then he might override aspects of my memory with his perceptions of me. And I believe what happened in that interrogation room is...a bit of a cognitive blind spot for him.” The cognition rolled his eyes. “Even though he wasn't even there. It's not like it's _his_ trauma.”

“Well,” the cognition continued, “I suppose that's a bit self-defeating, when the whole purpose of this Palace is preserving memory. But,” the cognition shrugged, “everyone has their own distortions, and nobody has full control over their own minds, no matter how hard they try.”

“And what, you're okay with that?” Goro asked the cognition.

“Of course not,” the cognition broke into an ugly sneer. “The idea that he's overriding my identity with his personal perception of me is absolutely disgusting to me. I don't want him in my head.” The cognition locked eyes with Goro. “But I don't want Maruki in my head, either. When are you going to wake up already? I never thought _you,_ of all people, would become so complacent.”

Hearing that coming out of his own lips was particularly unbearable. Goro just scowled, turned to the bar, and downed the rest of his latte.

“Well, I believe I've told you everything I need to,” the cognition said, and then he finished off his latte and stood from his seat, grabbing his silver briefcase. “I should go. No need for a cognition when you've got the real thing.” There was a hint of bitterness in the cognition's voice as he said that, turning away from Goro to push out the door.

Before Goro could wonder what the cognition meant by that, he heard the sound of steps in the kitchen, and then Akira, his eyes glowing yellow behind his glasses, appeared behind the bar in a green apron.

The shadow didn't say anything. He just gave Goro a piercing look from behind the counter, then placed one hand on the bar, leaned forward, laid one hand on Goro's shoulder, and punched him in the face.

Goro was so startled, he was on the ground with his hand over his aching nose before he realized what had just happened. The stool he'd been sitting on was tipped over in front of him. He looked down at himself, and saw he was still in his regular clothes, so it wasn't as if Akira perceived him as an enemy or invader. His shadow had simply punched him in the face.

“What the fuck—” Goro scrambled to his feet, hand still on his nose. It was wet, and felt like it was broken. Shadow Akira stood there, face flat, and raised a hand, beckoning him. Of course Goro wasn't going to approach when the shadow had just given him a bloody nose, but Akira didn't budge, just standing there as he continued to beckon. A mean smile slowly spread on his face, and Goro started to get the feeling that he was being goaded. Without fully thinking about what he was doing, he found himself taking one step toward the bar, then another, and when he was within range, Shadow Akira's hand shot forward, grabbed him by the collar, and heaved him over the bar with inhuman strength.

Goro flailed, and pitched face-forward over the bar, only to land on Akira's chest, smearing his blood against Akira's apron. He felt a tight grip in his hair, and then his head was wrenched up until his lips were dragging across Akira's, too rough to be called a kiss. He tasted his own blood dripping into his mouth, and when their noses knocked, a sharp pain shot through his whole face.

Goro shoved Shadow Akira away, and Akira's back crashed into the shelves of beans behind him, knocking down a jar to smash on the floor. The shadow didn't react, just bringing one hand to his face, feeling Goro's blood smeared there, and dipping it into his own mouth to taste.

“What is this?!” Goro demanded, backed up right against the bar as he glared at the shadow. “If you have something you want to say to me, then say it!”

“I have nothing to say to a traitor,” the shadow snarled at him. “Fuck you. Get out of here.”

Goro stared at the shadow. “If you really wanted me out, I'd be in my thief costume right now.”

“I don't want _you,_ you fucking _fake._ I want what you keep locked away in there!” Shadow Akira grabbed the collar of his Shujin blazer in one hand, tearing it down off one shoulder. “Take that off! It's not yours! It's mine!” He tried to yank the other side down, but Goro struggled against him, shoving him back again. Another pot of coffee beans crashed to the floor.

“This is _my_ home,” Shadow Akira snapped at him, stepping forward to smack his own chest. “Sojiro is _my_ father, not yours.” Akira's leg flew out, kicking the cupboard under the bar to Goro's side and cracking it open.

“Sojiro isn't your father—”

“He _is,_ ” the shadow kicked the cupboard again, spreading the crack and caving in the wood. “In every way that matters. And you _stole_ him from me. You and Sumire—you stole _everyone_ from me.” Shadow Akira leaned forward until their noses were almost touching. “You stole Futaba, and Ryuji, and Ann, and Makoto, and Haru, and even fucking _Morgana—_ ” His face twisted in anger, and then suddenly relaxed in a smile. “And Yusuke. He was supposed to love me. Not _you_.”

Under the pressure of those yellow eyes, Goro's mind stuttered to a halt. So Akira had known. “Yusuke isn't in love with me,” he said without thinking.

“Yes, he is,” Shadow Akira said in a sweet tone, like a teacher instructing a small child, “I know what he's like when he's in love, the kind of looks he has on his face, the way he acts around someone he likes. Because he was _mine._ _I_ learned every corner of his heart. _I_ made him happy. You think you can replace _me_ , just because you know how to suck a dick? Don't make me sick.”

Goro's lips pulled tight in disgust as he tugged his blazer up to his shoulders again. “I never thought you were filled with so much juvenile jealousy,” he said, fully aware of what a hypocritical thing it was to say, especially right now, when he was suddenly choking on enough jealousy of his own to vomit.

“You don't know anything about me,” the shadow snapped back at him. “You think I don't know what you've always thought of me? _Perfect, charismatic, beloved Akira. Effortlessly flawless. I hate him for being so perfect._ ” The shadow put on a picture-perfect impression of Goro with his TV mask, bringing his hand to his chin in a deliberately posed manner, before dropping it to say, “Don't dump all your fucking insecurity on me. I'm _nothing_ like what you think I am.”

“That's not—that's _not_ what I think of you.”

“ _Bullshit._ ”

Goro flinched as another jar of coffee beans smashed on the floor—this time, because the shadow had deliberately hurled it to the ground. Goro stared at it a moment, and Shadow Akira looked back at him with a grin.

“You don't think I'm the kind of person to do this, do you?” the shadow said, and before Goro could answer, the shadow braced himself on the shelf behind him, raised up one leg to press against the espresso machine on the counter and heaved, pushing the whole thing off to crash onto the floor with a heavy bang, tearing out the cord and spilling coffee grounds as it fell. Shadow Akira laughed to see it go, then spun around to grab another jar of beans and flung it across the cafe to smash into one of the booths, followed by another, then some mugs and saucers, too—tossing them at the front door to break the glass.

Goro could do nothing but watch, entranced by the sight of Akira with a mad smile on his face, destroying the very place he'd just raged at Goro for stealing from him. All Goro could say was, “Why are you doing this?”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Akira turned to him with a sarcastic sneer. “Did you want me to be a good boy? _Keep in line, Akira, keep your nose clean, stay out of trouble_. Do well in _school,_ get into a good _university,_ have a proper _life,_ date a good _girl,_ suck up to the right _people—_ ” each word was punctuated by a saucer flying across to hit a different part of the cafe—“who ever said I wanted that? I just want to set everything on fire, to tear down every piece of shit who's ever made me or my friends suffer and laugh as they fall. I put in all that work to be useful to people so I could get what I wanted, I built this place for me, but what good did it do? What the fuck is this place even _worth?_ ” The shadow stomped on the remains of a shattered jar of coffee, the glass crunching underneath his shoe.

Then he leaned back against the shelf behind him as if he were suddenly drained, turning his head to Goro. “When you showed me who you really were in the engine room—I was excited. I'd thought I'd seen some flicker of that before, I could tell you weren't normal. But then, when I _really_ saw you, I felt it,” the shadow grabbed the chest of his turtleneck. “I felt we were the same. ...And then you were gone.”

Goro's breath caught in his throat. He knew that feeling all too well. “...I get that,” he said, voice soft.

“Do you really?” Shadow Akira pushed off the shelving to step toward him again, broken glass crunching under his feet. His face was a distorted mask of anger. “If you got me, then you'd have _remembered_ by now!”

Shadow Akira charged at him, but he was wild and unfocused, and this time Goro was ready, raising a leg to shove him away with the bottom of his shoe. Akira stumbled back, nearly falling to his knees, but recovered immediately, and when he raised his face again, there was a feral grin on it.

Akira rushed him again, drawing one fist back, but Goro turned it away as he moved to the side, then when the second fist came at him, Goro caught it in a palm and pushed it down. He knew shadows were ridiculously strong in their own palaces—if Akira had actually wanted to hurt him, he would be doing far worse. The shadow wasn't even fist-fighting well, just throwing himself at Goro in mindless anger.

They grappled for a moment, Goro with the shadow's wrists in his hands while Akira pushed against him, forcing him back against the bar counter. Goro tried to knee him in the crotch—he'd never been above fighting dirty—but the shadow quickly twisted away to avoid the strike, then struck back with a kick of his own, which Goro jerked sideways to avoid, and Akira's school-uniform loafer slammed uselessly into the bar counter, making the whole thing shake with the force of it.

Goro started sliding to the left, so he could get out from behind the counter, but Akira quickly circled around to cut him off, grabbing him by the shirt to push him back against the bar again. Goro grabbed his wrists, digging into the pressure points with his fingers in attempt to make him let go, but the shadow wouldn't release him.

“What do you want?!” Goro demanded as he struggled in the shadow's grasp. He tried to bring his knee up again, but Akira pressed close, keeping him from kicking by proximity. Goro stomped a heel into his toe, but the shadow ignored it as if he didn't even feel the pain. Maybe he didn't.

Shadow Akira's face twisted in a sneer. “You don't even understand that much about me, huh?” And then he mashed his lips against Goro's.

Goro heaved back against him, dug his nails into the shadow's wrists, and then when that didn't work, released them to try pummeling his sides, but the shadow caught his wrists instead, forcing them down. Goro bit the shadow's lip and tasted fresh blood, but Akira just groaned into his mouth and pressed their hips together, making Goro feel the erection against his thigh.

“I love it when you're like this,” the shadow whispered in his ear, a low, threatening tone that sent a shiver running down Goro's spine straight to his cock. “When all you're thinking about is fighting. You know,” he casually rolled his hips, and Goro choked back a gasp—“seeing you give in to Loki and go berserk gets me _so_ fucking hard. _That's_ what I want. Not this—” he sneered against Goro's lips, “fake bullshit. You want to pretend you're anything else? Maybe you can lie to _them,_ but you can't lie to _me._ You're a psycho and a killer and I _love it._ ”

A shudder ran through Goro's body, and he wasn't sure if it was fear, or arousal. He shoved against Akira again, strained his arms, but the shadow held fast, before suddenly letting go, and without anything to push against, Goro pitched forward, and Akira caught him, spinning him around to shove him against the counter again, this time, with Goro's hips digging into the rim of the counter, Akira's chest against his back, one arm wrapped around Goro's torso to pin both arms to his sides.

“Fuck you,” Goro spat, but it was rather weak when Akira's hand was sliding around to his crotch, running up and down the line of his erection through his slacks.

“Mmm, keep dirty-talking,” the shadow teased, and then he tugged the collar of Goro's blazer and shirt down enough that he could bite the juncture of his neck—hard, enough to make Goro yelp. Akira continued to suck at the bite, his hand rubbing up and down the bulge by Goro's fly, while his own dick was pressed up into the cleft of Goro's ass through his pants. Goro's hips bucked involuntarily—he felt the pressure building in his balls as the sharp sting from his neck slowly seeped downward, both sensations meeting somewhere over his navel to create a mixed pain-pleasure. He tried to shove the shadow off him, and he broke one arm free just as the orgasm hit him, slamming one hand down against the bar as he helplessly humped Akira's hand, grinding against it to soak the inside of his pants with his cum.

“You always cum so fast,” the shadow said, and Goro could _hear_ the smirk in his voice as Akira's other hand dropped to Goro's belt to start tugging it open. “It's cute how much you want me.”

Goro knew he was being goaded, but he couldn't help reacting anyway. “Shut the fuck up—”

But he was cut off when Shadow Akira yanked his pants down and pulled him back by the hips, rubbing his cock against Goro's bare ass, the green bar apron between them. He felt the shadow leaning forward to whisper in his ear, “Beg for it.”

“Go to hell.”

The sensation of cloth left him, replaced by a hand that ran up the cleft of his ass, caressing his balls to trace around his asshole. Goro's hole clenched and unclenched against Akira's fingertip, his desire clear, even as his spent cock was softening underneath him.

“You're always like this,” the shadow said, sounding highly amused, as his fingers delicately circled Goro's rim. “I used to think it was just because you hate being vulnerable, or maybe it's a masculinity thing, and this is the only way you could let me fuck you. But that's not it, is it?” Shadow Akira dipped a finger inside—it was dry, but just one finger wasn't much of a burn, sliding in far enough to press that spot that was still sensitive from orgasm and make Goro gasp.

“The truth is,” the shadow said calmly as his finger rubbed back and forth over Goro's prostate, “all this conflict gets you off. It always has. You liked our games, you liked walking the tightrope of life and death as much as I did. You want to get your blood up in a fight, and struggle the whole way down. And then...” the shadow leaned forward to whisper in his ear again as Goro shuddered around his finger, “you want me to violently take what's mine.”

Goro gasped and slumped down over the bar as the shadow hit his prostate _just like that,_ and it felt good, but it wasn't enough. His ass ached to be filled, he wanted Akira's mouth on that bite again, he couldn't think about anything else, but then Akira's finger left him, and his asshole was spasming around nothing, and the anger allowed Goro to clear his head at least halfway.

He pushed himself up off the counter and turned around—awkwardly, when his pants were falling to his knees, and he could feel cum dripping down his balls and the inside of his leg, and his eyes couldn't help but be drawn down to the tent in Shadow Akira's bar apron.

But he wrenched his gaze up and grabbed Shadow Akira by the front of his apron, shoving him back. “I'm not what you think I am, or whatever sick fantasy you want to slot me into. Maybe I used to be fucked up, but I _chose_ not to be like that. I hated that. I hated myself, I hated everyone, I hated my whole life! And I'm not _that_ anymore. I made a new life for myself! I built this _myself,_ for _me!_ I didn't steal anything from you! And I'm certainly not _yours!_ ”

That seemed to ignite something within the shadow. His yellow eyes flashed, his lips twisted up, and he grabbed Goro's arm, wrenching it around painfully to shove him down over the bar again and hold him there with his arm twisted behind his back, bare ass in the air. Goro struggled, and he heard something heavy and metallic fall out from behind the bar as he kicked at the cupboards. But Akira just pushed his arm up higher, making the joint scream—Goro heard the clink of a belt and the slide of cloth, and then there was a pause and a sloshing sound, and Akira's fingers pressed against his hole again, this time slick with cooking oil or something—three pressed all the way in at once, stretching him painfully wide. Goro gasped as the shadow began finger-fucking him roughly, tone casual as he said, “You took Sojiro from me,” his fingers curled around Goro's prostate, making him moan and slump over the counter, “you took Ryuji and Ann and Futaba and Yusuke and Makoto and Haru from me—” the squelching sound was loud in Goro's ears, and his legs began to tremble under him as his free hand braced on the counter, keeping him from falling face-forward—“but _you_ will always be _mine._ ” And then the fingers left as quickly as they had come, and he felt the head of Akira's cock press against his entrance instead. Akira's dirty hand gripped Goro's shirt, and then Akira's cock shoved into him, right to the balls in one thrust.

Goro moaned, back arching and thighs clenching as the thick, burning sensation of Akira's cock filled his ass. His arm was twisted so tightly behind him he felt like his shoulder was about to come out of its socket, and when Akira started to pump into him, it just about did, and Goro was forced down onto the counter just to keep his arm from being dislocated.

He couldn't even keep up the facade of resistance anymore. He'd beat off to the fantasy of this a hundred times, a thousand times, the idea of Akira beating the shit out of him, holding him down as he struggled, and fucking him until he cried—he'd had so many fucked up, violent dreams that left him waking up hard or with cum in his pajamas as he sank deeper into disgust for himself.

Just another way that he was fucked beyond repair, he figured—he couldn't even mourn Akira like a normal person, he had this weird fucking guilt thing where he felt like he needed to be punished or something, or maybe too many battles in the Metaverse had just made him this way, he was addicted to adrenaline and pain, for better or for worse—he'd tried to do the normal thing, to have a semi-normal relationship and normal sex, and he'd toyed with the notion of dating Yusuke, it wasn't like he was opposed to it, it was fine, his relationships were all fine, and they were all important to him, it was certainly a fuck of a lot better than the time when he'd hated everybody and fantasized about murder-suicide on a daily basis, at least now he _belonged_ somewhere, and fuck Akira for denying him that, but—

Akira hit deep inside him, and Goro whimpered, feeling the drag of Akira's cock on his inside walls as Akira slammed him painfully again and again. He wouldn't be surprised if this made him bleed, and he didn't even care, he wanted Akira to tear into him, to go harder, to damage him and leave marks that couldn't be undone.

“Look at you getting hard again already,” the shadow said, a sneer in his voice. “You cum like a girl when you're on my cock. Go on. Jerk yourself off. I know you want to.”

Goro was far gone enough that he did, bringing his hand down off the counter and letting his face slump onto the bar so he could pump his own dick, but he still had enough presence of mind to feel ashamed of proving everything the shadow had just said right.

“Good boy,” Shadow Akira said, and Goro jerked backward, a futile attempt to escape his grasp. Akira just laughed and kept fucking into him.

“Oh, Akechi,” Shadow Akira said, slowing his pace to a more leisurely, torturous crawl, sliding in and out of Goro's slick hole. “We have some visitors. Look out the window.” And he took a handful of Goro's hair, wrenching his head back to force him to look out the front window toward the approaching group of people.

It was—Makoto, and Sumire, and Ryuji and—all the Phantom Thieves were there, coming closer to the door. They hadn't looked in yet, but—

“No,” Goro whimpered. “No no no no,” he tried to shake his head, but Shadow Akira's grip on the back of his head was tight, holding firmly it in position while his dick pushed in so achingly slowly. Goro's hand over his dick paused, his fingers wet with his own precum, but even if he stopped jerking himself, Akira's cock was still spreading him, filling him, and Goro watched in horror, as if in slow motion, as first Sumire, then the others turned to look inside Leblanc, their eyes meeting with his own.

“Let them all know you're mine,” Shadow Akira growled, thrusting deep into him with a wet smack, and Goro bit his lip to keep the whimpers from escaping his mouth. His whole body shuddered, his heart stuttering in his chest as he watched Sumire cover her eyes, Makoto turn away, Yusuke's eyes widen in shock and—

“He'll never touch you again, now that he's seen you on my cock,” Shadow Akira spat, clear venom in his tone. “You're mine, mine _mine._ We're fated to be together. Chosen by a fucking _god_ to be together. It doesn't matter how much you love him, it doesn't _matter,_ you're _mine._ ”

Goro's mouth fell open in a moan as he slumped helplessly over the bar counter, body jerking with each rough motion of Akira's hips as he flushed hot with shame and lust. His arm hurt, the bite on his neck hurt, his ass hurt, but he welcomed all of it—pain was just the extreme of desire, when you wanted something so bad it hurt, and he'd never felt that way with anyone but Akira—he couldn't lie to himself about that now.

And Shadow Akira's crazy possessive bullshit was doing it for him, too—Goro's hand clenched over his cock as if that could stop him from cumming, but Akira fucked it out of him anyway, and hot liquid spurted over Goro's hand and through his fingers, another stripe coming out of the head of his cock with each spasm of his body. Goro gave up even fighting it, rocking back into Akira's cock even as it shot piercing pain up through his twisted arm, while Akira's stinging grip in his hair forced him to watch the Phantom Thieves turn away and leave.

After Goro's orgasm passed, Shadow Akira's grip suddenly slackened, and his cock pulled out from Goro's ass. The pressure suddenly being relieved from his arm made him gasp, and he rolled over on the counter, pushing himself up and bringing his arm in to rub his shoulder. Shadow Akira was standing there: apron discarded on the floor, cock still out and hard, eyes glassy, a sadistic smile on his face.

Now that he'd cum, rage hit Goro all at once, and he shoved Akira—Akira let himself be pushed, tumbling down to land on his ass in the shards of glass on the floor. He just sat there and laughed. “They're just cognitions, aha-ha-ha-ha! You should have seen your face!”

Goro looked down at him, panting half from the sex and half from anger, and his eye caught on the flash of metal on the ground. It was that thing that had fallen out from behind the counter. A gun.

Akira's laugh petered out. His gaze followed Goro's. He picked up the gun, not pointing it, but holding it out to him. “In real life it was a fake, but here, well—” He grinned. “Go on, take it. You're mad, point it at me. You can even shoot if you want.”

Goro stood there, frozen, pants down around his ankles and his mind rapidly cooling. “That would kill you for real.”

“ _Duh._ But you've done it before, right? Go on, take the damn gun.” Shadow Akira tossed it at him, and Goro was forced to catch it, flailing a bit as he caught it. At least the safety was on.

And then Shadow Akira took his dick in hand and started rubbing himself. His cheeks were still flushed, the head of his cock dripping precum under his fingers. He tilted his head coquettishly, looking up at Goro through lowered lids. “Go on. Point it at me. I can't cum until you do.” He licked his lips, eye's locked on Goro.

“What? No. You're fucking crazy.”

“I know, I know. Just point the gun at me. I wanna know—when you killed my cognition,” the Shadow was panting a bit as he spoke, his hand on his cock moving faster, “what were you feeling? I can't stop thinking about it—was it a struggle, did you hate yourself for it, were you crying as you pulled the trigger—or—” Akira's pupils blew wide as if he was high on something, and maybe he was—“did it feel good?”

Goro's breath caught—it was like all the air was ripped out of his lungs, and suddenly he was looking at Akira—not the yellow-eyed one here, not in Leblanc, but in the interrogation room. His hand was rising up to point a gun at Akira where he sat in that chair across the desk, and Akira's eyes—Kurusu's eyes widened in shock. Goro felt a grin spill from his lips, he almost wanted to laugh, because he'd won, he'd _won,_ and this was his moment to grind his victory into Kurusu's face.

“This is where your justice ends,” he said, tasting every word.

And he fired. Blood and bits of skull splattered out the back of Kurusu's head, and Goro's heart was thudding so fast, caught between the fear of getting caught and the exhilaration of victory, he was almost getting hard from it, from _finally_ taking down the rival he'd been struggling against all this time—

Goro's vision blurred, and he was standing in Leblanc again, finger squeezing the trigger of the gun he had pointed at Shadow Akira—Kurusu—Akira? Kurusu. But the safety was on the the trigger was locked, and Kurusu was fucking up until his hand as he cried out loud, spurting jizz up to hit himself in the chin he was cumming so hard as he looked up the barrel of the gun Goro had pointed at him.

With every memory of his past lives rushing into him, the gun dropped from Goro's shaking hand, and he fell to his knees onto broken glass, turning to the side to vomit on the floor.

Kurusu was immediately there, a soothing hand on his back, bringing him a cup of water after he was done, which Goro knocked back to get the flavor out of his mouth.

“You remember?” The shadow pressed him, clear excitement in his voice. “Akechi. You remember, right?”

Still shaking a little, his mind not fully in reality, Goro wasn't able to respond right away. But the shadow kept talking on his own. “If you remember now, then I can tell you about my plan—your cognition told you that my Palace holds all the world's memories, right? The original world—it's gone, it's been too long, but I can use my Palace to put things back the way they were, or close enough. I'm going to need Maruki's help, and it's not like I trust him at all, but I'll figure out whatever he's scheming and make it work. So we can create a new world like the old one. It'll be just like going back. We can still go back.”

Goro couldn't reply for a long moment, his eyes unfocusing and re-focusing over and over again on Kurusu's face in front of him, Kurusu's hands on his shoulders.

Goro pushed himself to his feet, brushing off as much of the glass as he could, and grabbed a cloth from behind the counter to clean himself off before pulling up his pants. His knees and palms were bleeding a bit, but he could deal with that later. He looked down at Kurusu, kneeling on the ground in front of him. Kurusu wiped his hands on his pants and heaved himself to his feet.

“Your Palace...” Goro said slowly. “It's not the same as the old reality. It's still just perception. Your perception.”

“So what?” the shadow looked annoyed. “It's still closer than how things are now. I can't live in this world. I need to change it. And you'd prefer it like that, too, wouldn't you? You always hated Maruki's world of lies. I have to put things back the way they _should_ be. Everything right now is all wrong—all the Phantom Thieves, even _you_ were all wrong.”

Goro looked at Kurusu in silence. After a long moment, he said, “If you go through with your plan, would your perception of me change who I am?”

The shadow looked shocked, but then his expression grew subdued. “Maybe. I don't know, honestly. Maybe it would.”

Goro thought back on what the cognition of himself had said. _Even though I'm never going to love him back._

“Do you honestly think I want you messing with my head?” Goro said to him, voice carefully even.

“I know you don't,” the shadow said, taking Goro's hand in a painfully earnest manner. “But this is just like, a blanket thing, to deal with the whole world. The individual-level stuff—if it messes with you a bit, I know you can break out of it. Because you're stronger than that.”

Goro's eyelids dropped down to Kurusu's hands around his.

_You have no idea how fragile that feeling is, Kurusu._

It was true—back then, Goro hadn't loved him. He'd deliberately placed a wall between them, and he had enough skill and experience in that area to maintain it. So it wasn't as if Kurusu's view of him was distorted. He simply didn't know. And his world did not include everything that had changed inside Goro over the course of the past year.

Kurusu's—Akira's death had changed him. It had forced him to change, to acknowledge a million ugly truths, to face his own weaknesses. And that seed of feeling that had been planted in him was what had done it. The knowledge that he was _capable_ of loving someone—in a real way, not just with implanted feelings from Maruki that evaporated the moment he came back to himself—the knowledge that such feelings hadn't just been torn out of him forever by Shido or anyone else, had enabled him to change. Change for _real—_ and this was real. More real than any of the other times had been.

Goro would rather die than go back to being the kind of person who would point a gun at Akira's head and pull the trigger and get pleasure from it. He didn't want to be that person. Even if he was faking it half the time, even if he would be dreaming of violent acts he wouldn't let himself commit again for the rest of his life, even if this meant he would live a life of boring, mundane, petty, and trivial while he gazed out the window and ached for the feel of a knife on his throat or a monster behind his back, he wasn't going back. He was never going back.

“Now that you remember,” Akira squeezed his hands, “We can do this together.”

Goro let out a long sigh. “...I think you misunderstand something,” he said slowly, and he looked Akira straight in the eye. “I don't remember anything. And honestly, I don't want to. I like this life I've made for myself. And I'm not going back.”

Akira stared back at him, and Goro pulled his hand out of his grasp, turning away to step over the shattered glass and the pile of vomit, walking around the bar to head for the door.

“Akechi,” Shadow Akira called after him, and his voice sounded painfully broken. “You're not serious, are you? You wouldn't—”

“I'm sorry.” Unable to look back, Goro left the ruined mess of Leblanc and pushed his way out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That final scene went through so many iterations in my head, originally it was gonna be like, Shadow Akira inviting Goro to play Millionaire and then giving him all the cards as foreshadowing while simultaneously making him lose the game. And then fucking him over the card table. But then I got way too into the whole jealous voyeurism thing and I sacrificed symbolism for horny. Shame on me. I guess the whole imagery of Shadow Akira occupying “his” Leblanc and ruining it during the course of their fight is also good.


	29. Pride Cometh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this seems ass-pulled, as usual, I'm retroactively adding foreshadowing, ahahaaha ha... I changed a few earlier details to have this be clearer.
> 
> The great thing about Megaten is that you can shamelessly mix your mythologies and cultures into a total clusterfuck and it's all totally canon, lol...
> 
> This chapter is super hammy, I hope you enjoy ham. I love ham.

It turned out that Maruki didn't need Akira to do much of anything; his consent was enough for Maruki to do what he needed to do.

“Also, continue exploring my Palace with the Phantom Thieves,” Maruki told him over the phone. “No need to try holding them back, there's no way you could possibly make it through to me. I'll let you know once I have things ready to go.”

And that was that. Akira went back inside Leblanc, and he and the Thieves spent the rest of the evening chasing Maruki's shadow utility vans around Mementos. Whether or not it was true what Maruki had said, that it would be impossible for them to conquer his Palace, at the very least it seemed like it would take a long time.

The next night, Akira was visited by a dream that was both familiar and strange.

He was walking through his Palace again—at one point, he caught sight of one of Maruki's spindly servants wiggling its way through the halls, going about whatever its business was. It seemed Akira's permission had allowed their presence.

Akira felt a strange pain in elbows and behind, and looked down to see there was blood on his sleeves and shards of glass in his skin, as well as more on the seat of his pants, plus bruises on his wrists. He felt like he'd been in a fight, and he was upset for reasons he couldn't divine.

But he was torn away from these thoughts by the sound of a faint, feminine voice calling him. It was coming from the Velvet Room. Leaving the familiar hall where all his friends were, Akira headed through the open stone door and up the stairs to the blue prison. “Trickster,” he heard her calling from the circular room above, and he followed the sound of her voice.

When he arrived in the Velvet Room, as before, there was the doll of Igor in the chair, and Lavenza standing beside the desk, holding that book of hers.

“Trickster,” she greeted him with a smile. “I've been waiting for you. There's something I wanted to show you. Come.” She beckoned, and Akira approached her.

When he came close, she brought her large book around in front of her and cracked it open. Leaning forward to get a peek, Akira saw—

_empty pages full of cursed languages spelling out terrifying images of suffering and bliss more beautiful than anything swirling in an endless dark morass of blinding white and he was fallingintothepagesbutitwouldbegoodletithappen—_

Akira jerked away, staggering back, and looked up at Lavenza's face. She smiled at him, an odd, moving shadow cast on her face from the contents of the book. Her eyes were piercing yellow.

“Did you like that, Trickster?” she said. “Usually, Igor wouldn't show you that sort of thing...he prefers to hide it all away and be cryptic about matters. I can't say I'm very fond of his methods.”

“...You're not Lavenza,” Akira said slowly, looking the girl in blue up and down. “Who are you? And what have you done with the real Lavenza?”

Lavenza's smile split wide, wider than Akira ever remembered her smiling. “Am I not to your liking?” Closing the book and tucking it under one arm, she plucked up her skirts with her other hand and made the slightest curtsy. “Just like the one in your Palace.”

“You're not Lavenza,” Akira repeated. “What are you? And where's the real Lavenza?”

The strange creature sighed and tossed her book on the desk carelessly. “Ask the Counselor if you want to know about your friend or the doll. I'm just here to...fill a vacancy, so to speak.”

The yellow-eyed creature rotated her neck as if she felt stiff, cracking it loudly. “I must say, usually I find that useless doll's tools to be rather boring, but this one's rather to my liking.” With a grin, she spun around playfully in a way the real Lavenza never would have, laughing, then hopped up to sit on Igor's desk and began swinging her legs back and forth. “With the appearance of adolescence and the mind of an adult...this stirs such delicious base desires, don't you think?” The creature tilted her head and pouted, giving Akira a coquettish look. “Light of life, fire of the loins,” she said, laying her hand across her lips.

But when this failed to get any reaction from Akira, she said, “Ah, but this isn't your poison, is it? How about this, then?” She tilted her head the other way, and along with the movement, her body and clothes transformed, becoming Goro Akechi in his old school uniform and detective gloves—but with glowing yellow eyes. “Your only love sprung from your only hate! To early seen unknown, and known too late!”

Akira twitched in response, and the creature seemed to take that as a cue to push further, sliding off the desk to saunter towards him in a deliberately-alluring manner that seemed wrong, with Akechi's body.

“Who am I? I am the spirit that negates,” the yellow-eyed creature took one step forward. “Everything that your terms sin, destruction, evil represent—that is my proper element.” Approaching Akira, he laid his hands on Akira's shoulders. “In all chaos there is cosmos, in all disorder a secret order—and well, that's me. And you know me very well already.” The creature brought Akira toward him for a kiss—Akira jerked back, but the creature responded with sudden force, yanking Akira forward by the hair to press their lips together and plunge his tongue into Akira's mouth.

For some reason, Akira was expecting something cold and reptilian, something to prove the monstrousness of this creature, but it felt like nothing other than Akechi's tongue, the body pressed against his warm and inviting. Akira bit the creature's tongue and tasted blood, but it just moaned in pleasure and sank further into him, and Akira's body couldn't help but respond.

Akira reached up to grab a fistful of the creature's hair and yank its head back—its yellow eyes were glassy and its face flushed, a trickle of blood dripping from his smiling lips that it licked off with pleasure. “Go on,” the creature said, panting. “Or would you rather have it like—” Akechi transformed in his grasp, the hair pulling out from between his fingers as it turned to Akechi in his black mask costume, and swiped at Akira's face with his claws. Akira just barely avoided it on reflex, stumbling backward. When he looked up again, Akechi was hunched before him in a low stance, his eyes red like Loki's madness had overcome him, the skintight fabric of his costume sliding over every movement of his muscles and hiding none of his body, right down to the blatant erection tenting at his crotch. His eyes were locked on Akira, growling like a beast ready to strike.

Akira was slowly walking backwards, away from the creature, but it wasn't long before his back hit the bars of the cell behind him. Akechi followed him like he was stalking his prey, until he suddenly leaped at Akira, slamming his metal claws at the bars beside him with a loud _clang_ while the point of his mask came less than a centimeter from stabbing Akira in the neck. “I could kill you right now,” he whispered, close enough that Akira could feel the heat of his breath. Akira's heart was hammering in his chest, and he was rock-hard.

But then the creature suddenly burst into laughter and fell away, morphing again into Akira as Joker, striding casually back to the desk in the center of the room. “You're _so_ much fun.”

“Who are you? What do you want?!” Akira demanded, pushing off the bars behind him as he calmed his racing heart.

The creature spun around to face Akira again and spread his arms as dramatically as Joker ever had, his eyes flashing a passionate yellow. “I'm the hero who destroyed Yaldabaoth, _I_ stole the world from the grasp of the god of control, and _I'll_ be the one to take down Maruki, too. Nobody can keep _me_ in chains.”

The creature's words made Akira flinch, but he wouldn't deny them.

“Of course you wouldn't,” the creature purred. “ _We_ understand in a way the masses never will. You and I, we have a thousand forms, to know the depths of every soul. We are a flame: a flame in their hearts. And when we are all alone, we are extinguished.”

The yellow-eyed Joker leaned back against the edge of the desk, his manner all cocky nonchalance. “Your eyes do not deceive you. Igor isn't here. Philemon's powers have waned quite a lot during the reign of the Counselor. And I'm sad to say,” he circled around the desk to stand by the chair where the doll sat, “that mine have, too. Here I am, reduced to negotiating with wildcards, like this useless puppet.” He gave the doll a little poke, tipping it over to hit the floor with a dull _thunk._

“Negotiating? What do you want?”

“I want exactly what you want, Akira Kurusu,” said the creature, taking the place of the puppet behind Igor's desk. “I want the world back as it was. We live in the time of the most despicable man, when the earth hath become so _very_ small. This _species_ is ineradicable, like the ground-flea.”

The creature's words sounded uncomfortably familiar, but Akira stayed silent and let it continue.

Lacing his blood-red gloved fingers together over the desk, the creature leaned forward to give Akira a piercing look. “But you still have chaos in you,” he said, and in the word _chaos_ , Akira heard the silent roar of a billion voices.

“How about you stop talking in riddles,” Akira snapped back at him, folding his arms as he stared the creature down.

“I merely speak the language of men, the only language I know.” The creature grinned and let his hands fall to the table. “Tell me, Akira Kurusu. Aren't you sick of being used? Don't you want to be free?”

Suddenly, Akira's arms felt heavy, and when he dropped them to his sides he heard a _clink—_ and he was back in his old prisoner's uniform, with chains around his wrists and ankles that pooled on the ground. The weight of them was unbearable, and Akira found himself sinking to the ground, to his hands and knees. “What are you doing to me?” he demanded.

The creature leaned back in Igor's chair, putting his heeled boots up on the desk and crossing his ankles. “This is your mind, and I am you, as you are me. I wish for your freedom as much as you do.” Tapping one foot as if following an unheard melody, the creature continued, “As you're aware, the Counselor is not to be trusted. He spins lies and half-truths in attempt to bend you to his will. So what are you going to do about it, my little Trickster?”

Akira had no ready answer. He knew Maruki was using him, but it wasn't as if Akira had the power to go up against him alone. Everything Akira had ever accomplished, he'd done with the help of his confidantes—and they had all been stripped from him.

“Exactly so, little Trickster,” said the creature. “The Counselor deliberately stripped you of the source of your power, to keep you from opposing him. He locked you,” the creature pointed to Akira's old cell, “your nemesis,” he pointed to the cell to the left, “and your follower,” he pointed to the cell to Akira's right, “all together here, in the most secure cells, apart from the rest—you, because of the power of your bonds, him, because of his persistent defiance, and her, because the Counselor would use her instability to make her his special pet—as _you_ were too hard to control. None of this was an accident on his part, don't be deceived.”

With a special effort of will, Akira pushed himself to his feet so he didn't have to look up at the creature. “How do you know all this?”

The creature grinned, cocking his head at Akira. “Stars hide their fires, but I can see men's black and deep desires—though eye wink at the hand, his heart will know...what the eye fears, inside his heart will grow.”

Akira glared at the creature, but that only seemed to please it, and it continued. “It's true enough that the Counselor released all your friends from their memory prisons once they fulfilled their purpose and brought your world into the present. But only because he didn't need them anymore. He's confident that they've accepted the world he presented for them. He never attempted to trigger their memories, _obviously._ When he released them from the prison here, they _should_ have stepped into your Palace, as your beloved nemesis did, but the Counselor prevented them. All he wants from _them_ now is complacency.”

None of these facts were surprising to Akira—they were all things that he'd been thinking himself since his discussion with Maruki.

“Of course, since I am you.” The creature spoke as if replying to his thoughts again, rocking back and forth on the rear legs of Igor's chair. “If the Counselor had been a man of a different nature, I would have liked him very much. Killing you off when you became inconvenient, but keeping you in reserve should he require use of your Palace, then bringing you back only at the moment when you would feel _most_ alienated by this world so he can win you over to his side— _bravo,_ I say.” The yellow-eyed Joker applauded wildly at no one. “If his goals had been destruction rather than utter monotony, I would be sitting on his shoulder this very moment.”

Seeing Akira's look, the creature grinned at him. “You think me evil? Why, of course. But aren't we all? Sometimes, don't you you peer into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and then grow faint with horror at what you see there? And then the next day, you don't know what to make of it—you fail to interpret the horror glimpsed the day before.”

The creature crossed his legs the other way, slinging one arm over the back of the chair as he spoke leisurely, as if discussing a sports game. “Such horrors of the heart are only natural, but our friend the Counselor—he would have all of them erased, leaving behind only the palest shadow.” The creature's lips twisted in disgust.

“You suspect,” he went on, “quite wisely I might add, that once the he's gone through with his plan to use your Palace to turn the world back, he'll dispose of you however he sees fit while he takes control of the world again, this time using means that don't leave behind so many...” the creature waved a hand, “...cracks that need to be fixed. He's not about to relinquish his godhood. When has someone with such power ever simply _stepped down_ for the greater good? You're not so naive as to believe that.”

Akira certainly did not. “But what am I supposed to do?” he said, jaw growing tense with the strain of keeping on his feet. His back was beginning to ache with the weight of the chains. “I don't exactly have any options.”

“Little Trickster,” the creature gave him a patronizing look from behind his white domino mask. “You know better than any that a man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. And you hold the whole _world_ in your heart. All that remains is for you to _seize_ it.” The creature reached out one blood-red glove to grasp at the air and squeeze.

“ _How_ , though,” Akira's chains rattled as he stepped forward.

The creature lowered his feet from the desk and drew a knife from his belt. “If you can never conquer his Palace, so long as you live, then what choice do you have but to die?”

When Akira recoiled, the creature laughed—his laughter was loud and unrestrained, filled with malice and glee in equal measure. “Come now, you've died before. Just a little poke.” The yellow-eyed Joker did a little stabbing gesture with the knife. “The Counselor has established himself as our God in Heaven, and you'll only encounter his true body if you pass through the pearly gates. No need to worry, though—the pearly gates are a revolving door, these days. A world without suffering means a world without death, after all.”

Without warning, the creature flung the knife in its hands at Akira—Akira raised his arms in front of him, and the chains hanging off his wrists blocked the knife, catching the point between its links. Akira grabbed the knife and pried it out—for an instant, the knife looked like a bloody spear in his grasp, but immediately became a knife again.

“Impale yourself with that knife, and when you rise to the Counselor's heaven, pull it out again. Use the same blade to draw his blood, and bind him to you with your adamantine chains. To be,” the creature leaped to his feet, knocking the chair to the floor, “hurled headlong, flaming, from the ethereal sky, with hideous ruin and combustion, down to bottomless perdition!”

“Why should I believe anything you say?” Akira shot back at him. “And how are you any different from Maruki, or Yaldabaoth? You're just another supernatural figure trying to get me to do your bidding.”

The yellow-eyed Joker waved a finger at him. “That's where you're quite mistaken. Maruki seeks control, as did Yaldabaoth. I, like your useless friend here,” the creature casually kicked the Igor doll on the floor across the room, “am merely a manifestation of what already lies there. A helper, so to speak, to bring out the inner urges and guide you along your way.” The creature leaned over the desk, his hand trailing over the cards there, carelessly scattering them around. “This world is _ever_ so boring to me. No wars, no famine, no suffering, no pain. What's the point of life without struggle?” He turned to Akira. “Don't you agree?”

Then, as if he'd been reading Akira's mind, he smirked. “Well, except for you. You're just about the only person left truly suffering in the world. You can see why I have so much attachment to you these days. I'm quite enjoying your little romantic drama.”

When Akira glared at him, the creature just laughed. “So much hatred, jealousy and resentment! Yes, that's very good, I can use that.” After tossing most of the cards off the desk, the creature began pulling out drawers and rummaging around as if he were looking for something.

“But even if I did take out Maruki, so what,” Akira asked the creature, adjusting his posture to take the strain off his aching back. “I need him to reset the world.”

“The Counselor's plan is already in motion,” the creature said as he continued to rummage through the desk. “He runs everything by automated process, and it doesn't require his presence. The machine will keep on running, even if he isn't there. Capture the Counselor, merely wait for his automation to reset the world, and then...well.” The creature straightened up, pulling a piece of paper and a quill pen out from the desk, laying them out there where the cards had once been. Then he looked up at Akira. “I know you're no stranger to contracts.”

A shiver of dread went up Akira's spine. “I'm not signing anything.”

“You're quite right to be suspicious.” The yellow-eyed Joker turned around to pick up the chair he'd knocked down and sat down again. “There are many devils in the world who will attempt to swindle you with fine print. I should know, I instigated quite a lot of them personally.” He grinned, and beckoned Akira approach.

Dragging his heavy chains along, Akira slowly came in front of the desk. He looked down at the contract in front of him. There were fewer words than expected, and the language was surprisingly straightforward. Akira read it over and over again, trying to find some kind of catch.

It simply read,

_I, the undersigned, vow to defeat The Counselor and unravel his world of lies. In exchange, I will be provided with the means to do so by one Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep._

“You should know, little Trickster, that for me, this is a matter of my own survival.” The creature—Nyarlathotep's—expression turned grave. “Once the Counselor's control is complete and irreversible, and there is truly no more suffering in the hearts of men, then I will vanish from the world. On that same day, Philemon—master to your friend the doll and his cute little tool—will also be gone.”

Akira was reminded of what Jose had told him, in the bowels of Mementos, about the taste of the flowers of humanity's souls being weaker, in Maruki's world.

“That little creature is quite right,” Nyarlatotep told him. “But you don't need me to tell you that, do you?”

Akira leaned his hands against the desk to support the weight of the chains. “What means, exactly? And what if I fail?”

“You know as well as I do that failure is not an option,” Nyarlathotep said, but he waved over the contract, and a line was added:

_In the case that I fail, I, the undersigned, will be no more._

“What does that mean? I die?” Akira demanded.

“There is no more death in this world,” Nyarlathotep said. “That would be meaningless. No, you would simply cease to be Akira Kurusu.”

Akira swallowed. He would rather the contract have just stipulated his death. Being something...horrific and yet and unable to die—

“So then what would I be?”

“Who knows?” Nyarlathotep shrugged. “What is a man when you strip everything away from him? What's left? Consciousness? The being-in-itself? _Anatta_? Or perhaps something else, I couldn't say.”

Akira bit the inside of his cheek—adding the taste of his own blood to the lingering flavor of Akechi's. “What do you mean by the _means._ You don't just mean this knife, do you? Do you seriously think I can defeat Maruki alone?”

“Whoever said you would be alone?” the creature of chaos smiled at him. “You have The World in your heart.”

“I can't summon Satanael anymore.”

“Because the people are no longer seeking freedom. In this new world that's been built for them, they seek something else. The masses, you see, can be prodded along, but we're all ultimately at their mercy. You, little Trickster, must be like a politician. You give them what they weren't even aware they needed, and they lend you their power.” Seeing the question in Akira's eyes, the creature continued. “Right now, the masses are adrift. Their hearts are a void, filled with nothing but contentment. They want for nothing. They want nothing. And yet how empty it is to have no desires...without a single true, primal urge, without the pain of desire, without _tanha_ , who are you? Can you even be said to be human?”

Akira thought back on the shadows he'd once seen in the bowels of Mementos, stripped of their desires, resigned to their fates—and of the people in Maruki's world, living petty lives of pleasure with only modest whims, and no true passions. Maruki destroyed Palaces in the same way that Akira and his friends once had, but on a mass scale. There was no denying that they had brought down villains who had deserved any sort of punishment—but to prevent any twisted desire from ever forming, in the first place? Was there any freedom in a life like that?

Or perhaps it was simply that now, with twisted desires of his own, Akira understood better than anyone that he _was_ his desires, and he would rather die than have those taken from him.

“How could I give the masses what they need?” Akira asked.

“You write an IOU, of sorts. You promise them your world of desire and suffering, and they lend you their power—as the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.” Nyarlathotep's smile widened, showing a hint of tooth.

“And if I fail to pay?”

Nyarlathotep folded his hands in front of him and looked up at Akira with glowing eyes. “The masses come to collect.”

Akira stared down at the piece of paper in front of him for an immeasurable time. Nyarlathotep, it seemed, had all the patience in the world, and simply waited for him.

Chains clinking, Akira leaned forward, picked up the pen, and signed the contract.

“Excellent!” Nyarlathotep stood and clapped his hands. “Then let chaos storm! Let cloud shapes swarm. I wait for form!”

There was a flash of light, and the desk in front of him was gone, replaced by the old, familiar guillotine. Nyarlathotep as Joker strode over to it, kneeling down to insert his neck in the hole, and the brace closed over him on its own.

“I've always wanted to try this,” Nyarlathotep said with a bright grin at Akira. “Don't you think this is so exciting? Come! Summon your soul, and fuse us together!”

Akira closed his eyes and searched for Arsene, but no matter how far he dove, he never found him. He could be any number of masks, but he could never return to being who he was. What he brought up was the persona he'd come to after summoning Satanael—Raoul. Even this one felt uncomfortable in his mind, he hardly used it anymore. He sent the persona to the guillotine, and went over to the lever in the ground.

“Off with my head! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Nyarlathotep laughed, and Akira heaved the lever.

There was a flash of light, and when it cleared, Akira's head and heart was filled with a persona that felt new and right.

x x x

Stabbing himself with the knife hurt like hell, but bleeding out was a surprisingly not bad way to go—Akira just sort of faded out, and when he opened his eyes again, he was lying on his back in a field of clover, looking up at the blue sky. His right hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of the dagger Nyarlathotep had given him.

Getting to his feet, he found he was in his Joker costume, the chains not physically weighing him down anymore—though he felt them in his mind. He looked around, and saw clouds floating in the air with people sitting on them, laughing to each other, verdant gardens and tinkling brooks, elegant bowers, and perfect, sunny weather. Angels flitted about, and everyone walking around seemed to have a smile on their face. It was an absolutely cliche vision of heaven, like something out of a children's storybook.

As he began exploring the area, he was struck by how nobody ever attacked him. Was Maruki simply that confident that nobody would ever oppose him here? Or was war in heaven counter to his aesthetic?

Either way, when Akira asked some of the denizens of the clouds where “God” was, they readily answered with smiles on their faces, pointing above them to the statue of a giant man that arched over the great peak that loomed above them all.

The trek up to the heights of heaven seemed to take forever, and yet no time at all. No one ever stopped him or questioned him. They all seemed to engaged in their own bliss. Just looking at these people filled Akira with a rising disgust.

Ignoring the people milling about, Akira climbed from cloud to cloud, then up the winding mountain path to the summit, like some pilgrim journeying to a remote temple. Looking down below, the scenery was like some kind of classical painting, with elegant peaks covered by fluffy clouds. And above—

The giant, golden man embraced the mountain, his head resting at its peak the way you might rest your chin on your hands. Sitting ensconced in front of his head, in an egg-shaped cradle with a seat, was a familiar face. He sat in a half-lotus with one leg hanging to the ground, looking peaceful and serene like a bodhisattva, clad in all white and gold, and to all appearances, in deep meditation, or asleep. His face hadn't aged a day since the time when he'd been a counselor at Shujin.

Maruki. His _real_ body. The one Akira had been looking for, all this time.

Akira hesitated a moment, but when there was no response from the man in front of him, slowly approached. He came right up in front of Maruki and stared down at him, but still, nothing.

Akira raised up Nyarlathotep's dagger and plunged it into Maruki's chest.

Nothing happened right away. There wasn't even any resistance or blood—it was like sticking a dagger into a block of foam.

But then there was a rumbling around him—the whole mountain shook, golden lights came on around him, and there was the groan of steel as the eyes of the giant man who embraced the mountain opened, and at the same instant, the eyes of Maruki's human body flared wide.

“You!” Maruki cried out in shock. “How are you here?!” Maruki slowly came to his feet, and the mountain rumbled to life. The shaking of the mountain grew stronger, and Akira was thrown to the ground.

“Adam Kadamon!” Maruki pointed at Akira. “Subdue him!”

The giant golden man slowly raised up one hand, reaching toward Akira.

But Akira was already on his knees, a smirk on his face as he pulled off his mask. “ _Mephistopheles_!”

A chaotic whirl materialized behind Akira, and above his and Maruki's heads, sparks flew as black claws on long, thin limbs collided with Adam Kadamon's thick golden hands. The light of paradise's sun was blotted out as dark wings spread around them, their obsidian feathers reflecting a sickening and yet gorgeous array of colors in brief flashes.

“What have you done?” Maruki said, standing there in shock with the dagger still stuck in his chest, a line of blood trickling down his chest. The shadows of razor feathers fell over his face, making him look pallid.

Akira's answer was only a blink—when he closed his eyes, he felt chains on his limbs, and when he opened them again, they were there. He heaved himself forward, flinging the chains around his arms around Maruki's neck and wrenching the loop tight.

Maruki's eyes widened, his mouth dropping open. “Don't, you fool—”

But Akira choked him silent, and a bottomless, flaming hole opened beneath the both of them, and they fell.

x x x

Akira woke up in the middle of a wide, steaming crater in the middle of Shibuya. All around him was on fire and the cement beneath him seemed to have melted, but surprisingly, he felt no pain. In the center of that crater was Maruki.

The chains that had been weighing down Akira all slithered off him like living creatures to twine around every part of Maruki's body: his neck, his torso, arms, and legs, binding him to the cement.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...”

Akira heard a voice, familiar and ringing, louder and clearer than any other in the Metaverse. Pushing himself off the ground, he looked around to see shadow crowds gathered around them—some rubbernecked or looked on in shock, but nobody did anything. They just watched.

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...”

A yellow-eyed Joker came out of the crowds, his heeled boot landing on the rim of the crater. “The darkness drops again! And now what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Shibuya to be born?”

“Kurusu...” Maruki moaned, writhing among the mess of chains that covered more of his body than they exposed. His body was bloodied, broken and burnt, but he was clearly still alive. The knife Akira had thrust in his heart had become an ancient-looking spear, glowing hot among the chains, and blood was pouring out of the wound endlessly. But despite all the blood, he wasn't dead. The power of godhood, perhaps. “Akira Kurusu...what have you done?”

Akira rose to his feet and approached Maruki on shaky legs. “I brought down a tyrant,” he said, looking down at the broken remains of the god of the world. Before, up in Maruki's heaven, it had all seemed so unreal—but now, down here on earth, he had a real and building sense of his victory. He'd done it. His long struggle was over—he'd brought down Maruki, and he was free. Akira felt suddenly light, like an immense weight had left him—and seeing the chains that now bound Maruki, evidently, this had very literally happened.

Akira heard footsteps behind him, and the yellow-eyed Joker approached, coming up to Akira's side to lean an arm on his shoulder.

“You!” Maruki looked toward Nyarlathotep, understanding dawning in his eyes. “But I dealt with you!”

“I'm rather like a cockroach,” the yellow-eyed Joker drawled. “It's not that easy to get rid of me.”

“Kurusu,” Maruki's gaze turned to Akira instead. His voice was hoarse, lips chapped by the fire around him. “You don't understand what you've done. You can still turn back. Undo these chains, and we can talk. You don't know what will happen to the world if—”

“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven,” Nyarlathotep cut him off, kicking a rock from the rubble down toward Maruki to hit him in the face. Maruki flinched, but wouldn't give up talking.

“You don't understand, Kurusu,” he said, his eyes pleading Akira. “That man—that man is the devil!”

Maruki's expression of distress was _so_ earnest and sincere, like he was just trying to warn Akira, tell him what was best for him, to condescendingly show him the way and guide him into the light.

Akira was not going to be fooled by that again.

A wide smile bubbled out from deep in Akira's heart, coming to his lips and all the way to the corners of his eyes in an expression of sincere joy and triumph. Dusting off his black jacket, it fluttered behind him in the smoky wind as he ran a hand through his hair and sneered down at his defeated enemy: yet another god who had sought to control him, brought down to earth.

“No,” Akira took a step toward the broken, fallen god at his feet, and leaned one booted toe on Maruki's neck, staring down at his enemy to bask in the high of his victory. “ _I_ am the devil.”

Then he turned around and walked out of the crater, Nyarlathotep following behind him. Once they were out of it, Nyarlathotep clapped his hands, and Maruki, crater and all, sank down into the earth and out of sight, leaving not a trace in the Metaverse Shibuya around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mommy when I grow up I want to be a hammy, poetry-quoting villain with an evil laugh and great fashion sense
> 
> ETA: [mood music for Nyarly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jecjs4Z3U9E).
> 
> My deepest apologies to all the dead white men who are surely rolling in their graves to have been plagiarized here. Milton is surely rolling over extra hard. Not apologizing to Shakespeare, he'd doubtless be pleased I besmirched his work for gay porn. Christopher Marlowe, I'm coming for you next time~


	30. True Friends

Closing the door to the basement behind him, Akira strode through his Palace, heading out of the central area toward the exit. It was strange, being in here while awake for the first time, but it had been necessary in order to speak to Maruki. It wasn't as if he had any difficulty guessing his own keywords. Nyarlathotep, still taking the form of a yellow-eyed Joker, followed.

“Why are you still here?” Akira asked him, annoyed. When he'd made that deal, he'd assumed it would just be a one and done—but Nyarlathotep had persistently hung around all through his interrogation of Maruki, and showed no sign of going away. “Don't you have anything better to do?”

“Nope,” the demon of chaos replied, hands up behind his head in an utterly casual and cheery manner. “This is all very exciting to me. But I was rather hoping you'd go further on the Counselor.”

Gritting his teeth, Akira stalked onward. Nyarlathotep had been uncomfortably enthusiastic about that interrogation, and that was half the reason Akira had pulled back. “He's already in neverending agony because he can't die. How could you possibly torture him?” he snapped, then regretted the remark as soon as it was out of his mouth.

“Well—” Nyarlathotep's eyes sparkled, but Akira cut him off.

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Don't you want to know what's become of your dear butterfly nymphet?”

Akira did want to know about Lavenza, though he didn't appreciate the language Nyarlathotep used to describe her. He'd tried to get her whereabouts out of Maruki, as well as more details on what Maruki had said about the state of the world, but the Counselor had refused to say unless Akira released him—which Akira was obviously not going to do. Upon questioning Nyarlathotep on the matter, the demon had simply told him that the reset would stabilize things, which synced with what Maruki had told him initially, but Akira wasn't about to believe anything either of them said.

He would just have to worry about all those things later—once he made it to the reset on February third, he'd have his friends back, and they could figure out something together.

“Get lost,” Akira told the demon, speeding up his walking pace. He'd gotten everything he wanted out of this creature, and he was fully aware that keeping him around was absolutely stupid. Nyarlathotep, strangely enough, wasn't even hiding his nature as a creature of malice, chaos, and destruction.

“I expressly chose not to lie to you,” Nyarlathotep read his thoughts, “Because I knew you could be reasoned with. I could have continued to play-act as Lavenza and tricked you into signing a contract, but well, you've already been around that merry-go-round once before, haven't you? And copying gods of order isn't my style.”

Just thinking back on how Yaldabaoth had deceived and used him put a frown on Akira's face, and Nyarlathotep clearly picked up on his reaction. “I've deceived countless humans into committing all sorts of heinous acts. And it gets a little stale, to be honest. It feels so much better to find one who will take that step forward with their eyes wide open.”

In spite of himself, Akira stopped and turned around, and saw his own masked face grinning back at him. “You're not so fussed about things like good and evil, are you? You know that's all up to interpretation. What's really important? Freedom. And the will to power.” Seeing Akira was listening, Nyarlathotep continued. “That's why you accepted your dear Goro Akechi so unconditionally. You never cared about right or wrong, or that he murdered your friends' parents. You saw someone else with the same will as you, and that was all that mattered.”

“You know who else loved Nietzsche?” Akira spat. “Nazis. Get lost.” And he walked off again—but of course, Nyarlathotep knew what he was really thinking.

“Didn't your mother ever tell you,” the demon matched him, hands stuck casually in his coat pockets the same way Akira himself did, “follow not those who would leave, and refuse not those who would come?”

Akira's eyebrow twitched. His mother had, in fact, said that one often—in retrospect, her obsession with making sure he was getting along with everyone probably was some kind of guilt thing, since both she and her husband worked so much, they were hardly around at all. And then after Akira had been arrested, he'd practically been disowned.

But maybe Akira had taken those words to heart on some level. There was something in him that rebelled against the idea of turning anyone away. That was probably what had lead to the formation of this Palace, to begin with—he made a space for everyone.

However, Nyarlathotep was not just anyone. “It's cute that you've moved on to quoting Chinese philosophers,” Akira said dryly, “But you're still unwanted.”

“But I told you,” Nyarlathotep's voice was Lavenza's again, “you will always be my Trickster. And I will accompany you to the end.”

Akira spun around and kicked at the demon, but Nyarlathotep casually dodged the strike with a bright grin.

“Come on now, you're in a bit of a pinch without your nymphet, aren't you? I can take her place. You need me,” the demon said sweetly.

The aggravating truth was that he did. Akira would have been helpless without Nyarlathotep's intervention, and being unable to access the Velvet Room would be another massive handicap. But still, every instinct he had told him that he was playing with fire. Sure, Akira was a thrill-seeker, but he wasn't a flaming idiot. He had no desire to hang around someone who clearly got a massive boner out of manipulating him.

“Oh, your self-deception is so delicious,” Nyarlathotep crooned, taking Akechi's form again, this time in his personal clothes with that dumb sweater-vest. “Don't you enjoy the games we play?” he said in Akechi's cinnamon roll voice, with an ultra-fake smile that dug into Akira's heart.

Akira just gave him a look, turned around, and kept walking. He couldn't trust Nyarlathotep, and it was as simple as that.

“Trust,” Akechi-Nyarlathotep echoed his thoughts again. “A truly most foolish concept. You're wise to be suspicious of me—but why stop there?”

Akira smothered his automatic question of _what are you talking about?—_ it was a bad idea to even engage with him at all—but as long as he was thinking it, Nyarlathotep would reply.

“I'm talking about your dear Phantom Thieves,” the demon said. “Don't you think you should do something about them? What if they invade your Palace and try to steal your treasures? They could tear down our whole plan.”

Akira stopped yet again, hating himself for it, and faced the demon-as-Akechi. “What? Sumire promised they wouldn't go in again.”

Nyarlathotep burst out laughing, eyes watering as he slapped his knee over and over. He went on for a surprisingly long time, and Akira just watched, irritation building.

“Oh,” the demon wiped a tear from his eye. “Is trustfulness a sin, I wonder? You're what I should like to call a genius at trusting people!”

Akira's eye twitched again. The demon surely knew how much he hated Dazai.

“How beautiful it is to have good friends!” Nyarlathotep cried, sarcastically. “Behold the innocent fool who even befriended the suspicious, evil king who would have crucified him!”

Mushanokouji. Dazai again. “You sounded a lot more impressive when you were quoting foreign poetry instead of a middle-school syllabus,” Akira snarled at the demon, then walked off again.

Nyarlathotep laughed at him again. “Perhaps Melos has every intention of running back to you, Selinuntius, but he's also a fool. Rather than blind trust, isn't it best to thoroughly know someone, to know what they might do?”

Akira's pace thoughtlessly slowed, but he forced himself to speed up again, to ignore Nyarlathotep.

That didn't seem to matter, though, since Nyarlathotep knew his thoughts. “Spare me your obsessive whinging about if you can ever truly know anyone,” he said, disdain dripping from his tone. “ _I_ truly do know everyone. And I'm telling you to _know your enemy._ ”

Akira spun around to face him again, hardly able to contain his rising anger. “They're _not_ my enemies. _You're_ my enemy!”

Unexpectedly, Nyarlathotep got this little stricken look on his face before smoothing it over—just like Akechi would have. Even knowing it had to be an act, it still hit Akira anyway, and then he became even more angry at himself for letting himself be affected.

“We made a deal, Kurusu,” the demon said, fully adopting Akechi's manner. “I'll honor my end, and I expect you to honor yours. That's all.” And then he vanished, leaving Akira staring at the spot where he had been, biting the inside of his cheek until it bled.

x x x

Goro hadn't said why he wanted the Phantom Thieves to get together, but on his request, Sumire called them all to Leblanc anyway.

 **But not Akira,** Goro added to his message. **Don't tell him about this.**

 **Why not?** Sumire messaged back, though she had a feeling she knew what it was. She just had to ask, anyway.

**Just don't tell him. Please.**

It was rare that Goro used that kind of language, so Sumire gave in, and now they were all convened at Leblanc.

“I think we should clear Kurusu's Palace,” Goro said, standing in front of the table where the Thieves were gathered.

Immediately, Sumire, sitting at the edge to his right, gave him a sharp look. “What? Why?”

“I went back in alone, just to investigate,” Goro folded his arms. “Long story short—” He explained that he had encountered Akira's shadow. The shadow had explicitly told Goro that his Palace contained the memories of the original world, and that he intended to use it to reset everything to its previous state. Listening to him talk, the expressions of the Thieves all turned grim.

“But,” Sumire began slowly, carefully considering her words, “Do we really need to stop him? We all knew this was what he wanted, right?”

“It's not exactly the same thing,” Morgana piped up from where he sat on the table. The tip of his tail was twitching nervously. “It would imprint us with some of his own cognitions, for one. And memories are never perfect, either. It'd be best to take it like, he's making a new world which is really close to the old one, but not exactly.”

“Does it even matter, though?” Ryuji cut in, leaning over the table. “I've been thinkin' about all this stuff since we started, but... I dunno if I wanna go for what Akira wants. It just doesn't feel right to reset the whole world, y'know? This is our world.”

“Yes,” Haru said with a firm nod. “We've made our own lives this past year in this world—even if it was influenced before, what we make of it now is our choice.”

There were nods and calls of agreement from around the table, and Sumire watched them all. None of this was surprising to her. They'd all been talking about this in person and over text many times, since Akira's return. Slowly, over the course of much thought and discussion, it seemed they'd come to a consensus—all of them but Sumire.

Everyone seemed so sure, and Sumire didn't think they were wrong—but she was was still uneasy.

They had never really known Akira like she had—and they'd never experienced the twists in reality like she had. Ever since Akira had come back to them, she'd been thinking more and more about that time when everyone had treated her like Kasumi, and how wrong it had all been. Knowing Akira like she did, she knew his judgment was absolutely trustworthy, and she couldn't bring herself to believe he was mistaken.

This was her bad habit. She wanted to be on everyone's side, and it made her indecisive. She always tried to be as sure and confident as Akira was, but...

She looked over to Goro, seeking his judgment, but his face was a careful mask that refused to show her anything, which was the most worrying of all.

“I...” Sumire opened her mouth, and all eyes turned to her. “I promised Senpai we wouldn't steal his treasures.” She sneaked her eyes over to Goro, and saw his lips tighten and turn downward.

“The situation has changed, since you made that promise,” Goro said firmly. “His shadow has admitted that he's working with Maruki—meaning he's hiding the truth from us.”

“Still...” Sumire's eyes dropped to the table. “Couldn't we just talk to him?”

“If talking was enough to dissuade him, he wouldn't have a Palace,” Makoto pointed out from her seat opposite Sumire.

“I mean,” Futaba said hesitantly, face half-hidden from behind her laptop, “this'll help him in the end, you know? Having my heart stolen helped me a lot.”

Sumire opened her mouth, then closed it. She obviously couldn't say, it's different, because your desire was to die, and that was obviously one you'd feel better not to have. But would taking away Akira's desire to change the world back make him feel better about this one? Sumire couldn't help but feel reservations.

“But what about the Counselor?” Sumire said, grasping for some way out. “He's still in control of everything—don't we need to do something about him, first? And if he's the one orchestrating things...”

“About that,” Goro said with a nod, “Honestly, based on what we've seen of the Counselor's Palace thus far, it seems like it might be...extremely difficult to clear. I'm sure you've all been thinking the same thing.”

“I didn't want to say it,” Yusuke said glumly, “But it seems...perhaps impossible.”

“I won't say it's impossible,” Goro continued, “But it's unbelievably expansive. All of us understand that the scope of the Counselor's Palace is immense. It's nothing like the Palaces we've conquered before. However...” He raised a hand, index finger up, “Kurusu's Palace isn't as complex. Based on my preliminary investigation, I estimate that the central area is actually smaller than Shido's Palace was. If clearing one of the two Palaces will end Kurusu and the Counselor's plan, then his is unquestionably the better option. Furthermore,” Unfolding his arms, he leaned his palms against the edge of the table, “I have reason to believe that we have a deadline. The Counselor and Kurusu plan to reset the world by February third.”

“That's only a couple weeks away!” Makoto said, eyes widening.

“Exactly.” Goro's gaze slid in her direction. “So we don't have the time to clear the Counselor's Palace. We have to clear Kurusu's Palace, or the world will be reset, and our lives thus far overwritten.”

Sumire looked around the table—and she could see what everyone there was thinking. They were already all set on doing this.

She looked at Goro again, asking with a look, _do you really think this is a good idea?_ She thought, somehow, that with his feelings for Akira, he would be wavering more. But Goro's expression was resolute.

Sumire had never been in a situation like this before. She wanted to make everyone happy—Akira, and all her other friends, too. But she couldn't. She had to choose.

Looking around at all the eyes on her, the eyes of the people who relied on her, she couldn't bring herself to betray their expectations. She had come this far due to their support—she owed them everything, and she wasn't going to let them down.

“All right,” Sumire nodded. “It looks like we have no choice.” She tried to put the conviction she didn't feel into her words, and it seemed it worked, as everyone nodded back at her.

“Then we're all in agreement!” Morgana chirped, hopping down off the table. “Let's go!”

x x x

The space just outside Akira's Palace was basically just like a long hallway that lead onward. It seemed there was no door to the Velvet Room here—though it was always closed to her lately, anyway. Knowing what she did know about the Counselor, perhaps he simply didn't want her in anymore, and that was that. But still, she worried about the twins.

Before heading in, she caught Goro's eye and drew him aside to talk. “Do you really think this is a good idea?” she asked him, quiet enough that the others wouldn't hear.

“If I didn't, I wouldn't have proposed it,” he replied coolly.

Sumire knew him a lot better now than she had before, and she would sure she would come to understand him even better in the future, as they spent more time together. But there were still so many unknown places in Goro, and she had trouble figuring out what he was thinking. She'd seen him at his worst, back when he'd been wild and bloodthirsty, and part of her wanted to ask if he still had that in him, but she wasn't sure she'd get an honest answer, anyway. Maybe it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

“You don't...” Sumire paused and looked down, then steeled herself to ask, “you don't feel like maybe, Senpai might have the right idea? About changing the world, I mean.”

Goro didn't answer immediately. But after a brief, inscrutable silence, he replied, “Do you want to be forced into going back to the person you used to be?”

“No.” That was the one thing Sumire could be sure about. She couldn't imagine anything worse than going back to who she'd once been.

“Well then, there's your answer,” Goro replied.

Sumire didn't realize until the conversation was over and she'd walked away that Goro hadn't answered her question.

x x x

The central area of Akira's Palace was full of cognitions, all of which seemed quite friendly and willing to talk. Seeing a familiar-looking one, Sumire called out to her and waved. “Ohya!”

The woman with a black bob and fanny pack turned and looked at her, then tilted her head. “Hmm? Aren't you one of Akira's friends...? Where's Akira?”

It was a little jarring for Ohya to speak to her like a stranger, after all the time they'd spent together, but Sumire had expected this. “Oh, he's busy right now. Um, actually, I wanted to talk with you about him.” When Ohya gave her a questioning look, Sumire's eyes flicked over to Morgana, who nodded back at her. “Actually, I wanted to ask if you knew about his treasures.”

Ohya's expression turned from a smile to a frown, and Sumire tensed, worrying for a second if the cognition would turn hostile. But nothing of the sort happened. “Ahh, so that's what this is about, huh? Akira's said this might happen. Well, let me tell you how this works.” Ohya folded her arms and leaned her weight on one leg. “Pieces of his heart are scattered around this Palace. Well, they're also like his treasures. I have one of 'em,” she pressed a hand to her chest, “and there are nineteen others with pieces. If you gather all twenty pieces, that'll open the way to Akira's treasure.”

“We gotta fight twenty bosses?!” Ryuji yelped, and Ann kicked him in the shin to silence him.

Ohya waved a finger at him with a _tsk tsk tsk._ “Not so fast, kid. This isn't that kind of Palace. We're all on the side of the Phantom Thieves, so we're not gonna fight you. We _are_ going to test you, though.”

“Test us?” Sumire pressed.

“Yeah,” Ohya nodded. “You have to prove that you can make us happy.”

“That sounds even more difficult...” Yusuke said.

“Of course,” Ohya scoffed. “Anyone can beat up a few shadows. But that's not the important thing, is it?”

Sumire let this information sink in. It was very like Akira to have a Palace like this, and it pricked at her heart again to be going behind his back. But she'd made the decision, and the others were all behind her. There was no backing out. “So then how do we prove ourselves?”

“You pick a representative,” Ohya held up a finger, “And we go on ten dates. That's how much time you have to make me happy. You can try as many times as you like, or with as many representatives as you like.”

Sumire looked back at the others, and saw they were looking at her. Well, that was no wonder. She was the one who knew Ohya best, after all. “Right,” Sumire said. “Then I'll go.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, black swirled around her, and the scenery around all vanished.

x x x

For the first “date,” like many to follow, Sumire met Ohya at Crossroads bar.

It was uncanny—she and the Cognitive Ohya had conversations that were very similar to the ones she'd had with the real Ohya, and went through all the same series of circumstances. This time, with the benefit of hindsight and knowing Ohya better, Sumire had an idea of what to say, how to approach her. It was even kind of fun, focusing on how she could show Ohya a good time, and get her to open up.

 _So was this his life, then?_ Sumire wondered, and was forced to conclude that it was—or at least, it was his life the way he remembered it.

And when a number of dates in, a drunk Ohya leaned against the bar and gave Sumire this up-and-down wandering look, Sumire found herself wondering if _that_ had been a part of their relationship too.

Not to say that the thought hadn't crossed her mind? Ohya was like a bad big sister, someone your parents would warn you about, with a devilish smirk and the sort of nightmare level work ethic Sumire half-respected and half-feared, she would definitely know all the nastiest parts of town and take you to all of them, and it was a _very bad idea—_

An unknowable amount of time later, Sumire was stepping out of a cognitive love hotel with a very embarrassed-looking Ohya, the events of the night still playing on loop in her brain, feeling both overwhelmed and also kind of like she wanted to go back and do it all again.

“I can't believe I just did that,” Ohya was muttering, one hand over her face. “Aghhh, I really need to stop drinking. I took advantage of you...”

“Oh, no no no!” Sumire waved her hands. “I was the one who suggested it. And besides,” she let a small smile grow on her face, “I had a good time.”

“Aha-ha,” Ohya laughed, showing a rare blush. It seemed she did have some shame, after all.

They had a couple more “dates” after that, and Ohya talked more about her old partner, Kayo. When the time that Sumire remembered came, when Ohya's career had been on the line, Sumire was able to come back and say truthfully that she'd changed the boss's heart. And then at the end, Ohya revealed that she'd known Sumire was one of the Phantom Thieves all along.

“Thanks, Sumire,” Ohya said on their final date at the top of the Tokyo Skytree. “I don't know what I would have done without you.”

After a moment of hesitation, Sumire said, probing, “So...are you happy?”

“Huh?” Ohya looked surprised by the question. “Damn, how long has it been since I even had a spare moment to consider that question? I guess...yeah. I am happy.” She looked at Sumire and smiled, and her body was surrounded by a shining light as her form slowly faded.

And then, floating there where she had been, there was a card. _The Devil._

Taking the card in hand, it felt slightly warm. She knew without even being told that this card was Akira's bond with Ichiko Ohya. The card looked eerily similar to the one Sumire had once seen in her mind, but holding it in hand felt a little different than the one she remembered. Akira's Devil was like Sumire's own Devil, but slightly different, just as she had gotten to know a different Ohya from him. How strange that she could be the same person, and yet not. And having experienced this, she wasn't sure she could ever look at Ohya the same way again. ...Not in the least because of, well, _that._ But she also felt closer to Ohya than she ever had been before. That bond was firm in her heart, a mooring anchor.

Once the card was in her hand, the scenery around her faded, and she reappeared in the central area of the Palace, in front of all her friends. They were all sitting down or reclining against surrounding statues, as if they'd been waiting a while. The Cognitive Ohya was there in front of her, nodding. “Well. There you go. You earned it. Use it right, 'kay?” And she turned around, leaving to head back to wherever it was cognitions went.

Looking around at her friends' faces, she asked, “How long was I gone?”

“Only about half an hour, by my watch,” Makoto answered. “So you got the treasure?”

Sumire was shocked. To her, it felt as if days, or maybe even longer had passed. But perhaps that was an illusion of the Palace. It was a good thing it hadn't actually been long.

She drew out The Devil card and showed it to the others. “Yes, I did. It seems to be a symbol of Senpai's connection to I—to Ohya,” quickly corrected herself with a little clearing of her throat. “I think all the others will be like this...cards, I mean.” She didn't explain how she knew that—the Velvet Room was one of those things it was easier to just keep her mouth shut about.

“Then I suppose we just have to go around to all the relevant cognitions to get all the others,” Makoto said.

The prospect of talking to that many people in one night was absolutely daunting, though. Sumire was already exhausted—not physically so much as mentally. “I'm not sure I can manage all that right now,” she said. “How about we just investigate this area to map out what we can, and come back to talk to more cognitions later?”

Goro didn't seem pleased about that, but the rest of them all nodded. So they spent the rest of the night splitting up and exploring the Palace.

Outside of the central area, with its statues, sets, and friendly cognitions, they discovered a door that simply led into a sprawling Tokyo cityscape—what looked basically like the real world. There was also a door near the central area that was locked and wouldn't open, and since none of them could summon their personas, they couldn't try firing any spells at it, either.

During the course of their investigation, a few times, they caught sight of squiggly shadows that looked just like the ones they saw in Maruki's Palace—but they scuttled out of sight quickly, which was probably for the best, since the party wouldn't have been able to fight them, anyway.

The other thing they discovered was a set of stone steps that led up into a very familiar place—the Velvet Room. But it was completely empty.

Approaching the bare desk in the center, Sumire's gaze swept around the three cells, and she was struck by an intense sense of deja-vu, like there was something on the tip of her tongue that she couldn't quite say. Something important had happened here, she was sure of it. “Was this his, too...?” she murmured to herself, and her gaze happened to catch on Goro's. She caught him staring at one of the cells.

“Do you know this place, Goro?” she asked.

“No,” he shook his head. “I just thought it was kind of creepy.” He turned around and headed back down the stairs. “It looks like there's nothing here, so let's go.”

Sumire frowned at his back. She couldn't help but have the feeling that he was lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why is Ohya first, you might ask? I just like Ohya. Best girl.


	31. Without Desire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .........sorry for the very long delay... This chapter was a really difficult one for me to write, and then I got distracted by Devil May Cry. But I've torn myself away daddy Dante's demon dick for this!! Somehow!! I do plan to finish this fic. It's just super long, I got a little burned out for a while there.

Sumire was deeply apprehensive about seeing Akira again, but when he turned up at Leblanc to meet with the Phantom Thieves for their next foray into the Counselor's massive Palace, he seemed more relaxed than before, and everyone managed to keep their mouths shut around him surprisingly well. Sumire felt bad about hiding things from him, but she recognized there was no other way.

And they _had_ made some progress through the Counselor's Palace—after some wild goose chases through the underground paths that led in and out of Mementos before popping up above ground again, they'd finally pinned down where all the shadow utility vans were headed.

If there was one thing Sumire had learned about the Metaverse, it was that you couldn't expect anything to operate according to common sense. You'd walk in a door leading east and come out heading west, and buildings were often far bigger on the inside than the outside.

This was another one of those cases. A nondescript office building in the center of Tokyo—not and significant landmark, it seemed to have been purely picked for its location—with a small parking garage below. The garage looked like it would only fit a few cars, but a seemingly endless stream of white utility vans streamed in and out at all hours of the day. And if you walked into the building, you'd find the interior was sterile white like a medical facility, with squiggly shadows in lab coats briskly going about their business. There were no guards, and nobody stopped the party from going in.

“May I help you?” said the masked squiggly at the front desk.

“What is this place?” Sumire stepped forward to ask, placing her hands on the counter.

“This is the Tokyo Heart Hospital,” the masked squiggly replied in a pleasant, feminine voice with one rounded limb raised to indicate the facility. “Here, we treat patients with the most persistent, troubling desires, and help make them whole.”

“What do you mean by _persistent, troubling desires?_ ” Makoto stepped up from behind Sumire to ask the question that she'd been right about to ask.

“Since you're the Phantom Thieves,” the masked squiggly gestured to them, making them all jump a little at the recognition—“I'm sure you all understand. You might call them _twisted desires._ ” The squiggly nodded. “While it's simple enough to remove those for the moment, they have a tendency to come back. For example,” the squiggly indicated Futaba with a raised hand, “You can remove the desire to die, but if you don't change the situation that made that desire grow in the first place, then that desire will take root once more.”

Futaba jumped, clearly shocked behind her goggles, before she finally managed to stutter out, “H-how did you know about that?”

“The Counselor knows everything about you, of course,” the squiggly said, and you could hear the smile in its voice. “But rather than my explaining, why don't you take a look around and talk with some shadows for yourself?”

“Why are you just letting us in?” Goro cut in sharply. “Why aren't any of the shadows here attacking us? Why not defend your Palace?”

“The Counselor has no desire to hurt you,” the squiggly replied, its manner eerily calm and unperturbed. “And neither is he threatened by you. There's nothing you could possibly do to damage this Palace. Instead, why not explore it and try to understand?”

Sumire's eyes shifted over to Akira, examining him with concern. She knew how he felt about the Counselor and this Palace, and she was worried about how he was taking this.

But he didn't seem in the least bit upset by anything the shadow said—he was utterly relaxed and calm, hands in his pockets as he quietly listened. If anything, it seemed like there was a shadow of a little smirk on his face.

Sumire was a little confused, but pushed that feeling away, stepping back from the counter to look at the party. “Well, we might as well explore, then,” she said, and was met with nods.

“How about we split up to investigate?” Makoto suggested. “Since it seems there aren't any threats here.”

“We don't know that for certain,” Goro shot back. “Don't let your guard down. But I agree, we'll cover more ground if we split up.”

There was general agreement in the group, so they decided to split up, and they all headed down the various white hospital-like hallways to different rooms to talk to the shadow patients. Sumire was very quickly left alone, and not sure where to go, she picked a room at random.

Knocking on the door without thinking—the nameplate said _Isamu Honda—_ she flicked herself in the forehead for doing something as silly as knocking before going to talk to a shadow, and just opened the door.

It looked like a hospital room, but a nice one, a private room with a vase of flowers at the window and a few personal effects decorating the place. A man lay in the bed in a robe, gazing out the window. When Sumire came in, he didn't react, still staring out the window at the night city.

“Hello? Mr. Honda?” Sumire stepped in. The atmosphere here was so real and not Metaverse-like, she found herself slipping into a more reserved manner.

“Hmm?” The man in the bed replied, head turning to face her.

“Um, I've come to visit.” Sumire came up beside the bed—glancing around, she found a chair. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Sure, whatever,” the man replied, never turning to her.

Sumire wasn't sure what she'd been expecting this shadow to be like, but she still felt uneasy as she sat down by the bed. “How are you feeling?”

The man shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

It felt intrusive, but Sumire didn't want them to have to stay all night. So she got to the point. “They said at the reception that the patients here have, um, _troubling, persistent desires..._ Do you have something like that?”

“Oh, yeah, that,” the man nodded. “Yeah. I really want to kill someone.”

Sumire was a taken aback, silenced for a moment, but she decided to press him on it. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I just keep having these dreams, you know, where I'm killing women I know, and they feel really great.”

It wasn't as if the Phantom Thieves had never encountered anyone like this, but still, the casual manner with which he spoke about murder was extremely unnerving. “Can you tell me more about these dreams?” she said, and while she asked that, she noticed what looked like a medical chart on a clipboard sitting on the bed's table attachment that was pushed off to the side, so she reached out and grabbed it.

The man's head turned out the window. “They just keep coming back. I'd have these intense dreams, and I'd wake up and they felt real. It got me thinking about it more and more. I started watching online snuff videos and stuff, and they were interesting, but they never really did it for me. It had to be the real thing.”

Sumire scanned down the chart.

_Patient 035789-F._

_Hospitalization [date]: Desires intensely to kill women of specific profile, carried out three murders. Palace grade 6-B. Removed desire after making record of psychological profile._

_—Patient committed suicide after desire removed. Full reset activated, with pre-removed desires and wiped memories._

_Hospitalization [date]: Upon encountering revived woman, pathological desire returned. Removed desire, wiped memory, and altered personal history._

_Hospitalization [date]: Upon encountering revived woman, pathological desire returned. Removed desire, wiped memory, altered personal history, and changed location._

_Hospitalization [date]: Pathological desire returned for unknown reasons. Removed desire, wiped memory, further altered personal history, changed location, altered perception of women._

_Hospitalization [date]: Pathological desire returned for unknown reasons. Removed desire, wiped memory, further altered personal history, changed location, altered perception of women, muted emotional response._

Skin crawling, Sumire turned back to the man in the bed. “So did you try it?”

The man shook his head. “I thought about it all the time, but I never did it. The doctors here say they'll take the desire out of me, just in case. Doesn't matter what I want,” he added bitterly, looking away again.

“Wait...you don't want this desire removed?” Sumire said, struggling to understand the shadow's mindset. Even if he was someone abhorrent, she felt she had an obligation to understand why he felt that way. “Doesn't it hurt you to have this...desire you can't fulfill?”

The shadow turned to her with a sardonic grin. “Oh, you don't have to try to hide how horrified you are, I know how nasty I am. And yeah, it does hurt.” He shrugged. “The more time that passes, the worse it gets. But it's funny, I don't want it to go away. It's not like I've got anything else going for me—I don't have a wife or a family, I can't hold down a decent job. But it's not like I'm upset about that, either. I just don't care about anything. This...obsession of mine makes me feel alive. Even if I never get what I want, I don't wanna stop wanting it.”

Sumire shifted in her seat, trying to hide her discomfort, but she got the feeling the shadow saw it all with his piercing, dead eyes, so she stood up.

“Leaving already?” said the shadow as she walked to the door without saying goodbye. “It's a shame, you're cute. Just my type,” was the last thing she heard before she closed the door behind her.

x x x

The next room Sumire wandered to had a woman's nameplate on the door, which was a slight relief. Walking in, Sumire found a middle-aged woman lying in bed, lying back as if she was having a nap.

Sumire didn't play it polite this time, going straight in to look for the clipboard beside the bed that had the woman's history.

_Patient 031282-E._

_Hospitalization [date]: Desires intensely to end animal suffering, Palace grade 7-A. Died on [date] of overwork in pursuit of goal, desires were pre-removed after full reset as per daughter's wish._

_Hospitalization [date]: Upon adopting pet for daughter, pathological desire returned. Removed desire, wiped memory, and removed pet from household._

_Hospitalization [date]: Pathological desire returned for unknown reasons. Removed desire, wiped memory, and altered personal history._

_Hospitalization [date]: Pathological desire returned for unknown reasons. Removed desire, wiped memory, further altered personal history, added third child._

_Hospitalization [date]: Pathological desire returned for unknown reasons. Removed desire, wiped memory, further altered personal history, altered mental/emotional response._

Looking up from the clipboard, Sumire realized the woman was awake.

“Hello,” said the shadow woman. “You've been reading my file. Aha, that's a little embarrassing. This all seems like a bit of an overreaction.”

This shadow seemed very different from the last one, and Sumire set down the clipboard with some relief. “You're here because you want to...end animal suffering?” This didn't seem like a twisted desire to Sumire, but perhaps it could develop into something like that, if she initially died from overwork. But still, Sumire couldn't bring herself to see something like that as bad. She'd worked herself to exhaustion before, as a gymnast—she wrenched her mind away from those thoughts. She didn't want to think about gymnastics anymore, not ever again. She wasn't that person anymore.

“That's right,” the woman replied with a sigh. “And honestly, it'll be a relief to have this desire taken from me. Every time I see a stray dog or cat that looks like they're not being taken care of, I tear up. But I don't have time to do anything about it—I have to take care of my kids, after all. I never thought I'd have another baby at my age, but well...life happens, I suppose.”

Sumire glanced back down at the clipboard in her hands, back to the line _added third child._ It couldn't be—she'd been given another child to distract her from her goal?

Looking up from the clipboard, Sumire asked, “You want the desire gone?”

“Of course I do!” The woman looked at her, incredulous. “I have to take care of the kids and my husband, I have my job at the grocery store—if I went gallivanting off trying to pursue this impossible dream of starting a nonprofit, I'd just make the whole family suffer, myself included. It's better if I could put it out of mind, and just be happy with things as they are. I don't want to suffer for an impossible cause.”

Sumire looked back down at the clipboard with a frown. She wondered if this woman had always thought this way, or if her mind had been changed. And yet, if she'd originally worked herself to death, it wasn't like Sumire couldn't see the problem in that desire. If she'd had a Palace—who knew what had been going on there?

“Thank you for your time,” Sumire said thoughtlessly as she got up, setting down the clipboard to walk out with a grey cloud of thoughts milling about in her head.

x x x

After leaving the woman's room, Sumire found herself aimlessly wandering down the hall, not really interested in going to talk to any other patients immediately.

It was then that she ran into Goro coming out of another patient's room, and when she caught sight of him, she waved and ran up to him.

“How's it gone?” Sumire asked him. “Have you spoken with some patients?”

“Just three, but that was enough.” There was an expression of open disgust on Goro's face. “This place makes me sick.”

Sumire wasn't very surprised by his reaction, but she pressed him on it. “What about it?”

Goro gave her a sharp look. “This is a facility for brainwashing people, or haven't you noticed?”

She had noticed, but she wouldn't exactly put it in that light. “It's not far off from what we've been doing, though...”

Goro turned his head away. “Is it giving you second thoughts about the Phantom Thieves?”

“...I don't know. Maybe. I can understand the desire to want to make people happy.”

Goro folded his arms in that careful way he always did when he had his claws on. “It's a garbage principle to base your whole world around. You can't make everyone happy.”

Sumire couldn't really argue that, but Goro's attitude also struck her as contradictory. “Then why come to suggest we invade Senpai's Palace?” she said, lowering her voice in case Akira was around. “It sounds like you agree with him.” After the words came out of her mouth, she realized that maybe she was trying to talk him out of it. She just couldn't believe that Goro really wanted to steal Akira's treasure.

“Not at all,” Goro leaned his weight on one leg, lowering his voice as well. “I don't want either of them in control. Both their Palaces need to go. Akira's is just the easier target, like I said.”

“Tearing down this Palace won't do anything to help the people whose desires have already been taken from them,” Sumire said, and her voice came out surprisingly harsh. Why was she so worked up about this? It wasn't like she had this deep conviction that that murderer had a right to his desire to kill, and that woman had worked herself to death, even if she had been passionate in pursuit of her goal—passionate in pursuit of—her goal—her goal—

 _The feeling of the bar under feet, the knowledge that people were watching_ her _and not Kasumi or anyone else, the thrill of landing a difficult jump—_

It flashed through her mind for only a second, like the memory of a movie she'd seen once. Even her parents hadn't been bothered when she'd quit, it had been natural, most girls quit around this age after all, when you have other priorities, she wasn't that person anymore, she had a new _life_ that was her own and not Kasumi's _(but maybe this wasn't_ —

“Too bad for them,” Goro snapped, and Sumire was ripped back into the present, forgetting everything she'd just been thinking about. “If they really wanted it, maybe they wouldn't give it up so easily.” He dropped his arms to his sides, and turned away. “We should explore this place a bit more,” he added before walking off, and Sumire was left there, his words ringing in a hollow space in her mind.

x x x

The next person Sumire met in the hallway was Akira.

She saw him stepping out from a door down the hall, carefully scanning the corridor before he stepped out. She noticed he always did that—checking a room was safe before he did anything.

Sumire gave him a little wave and ran up to him. “How are things going?”

He looked at her with a little smile, and paused, as if he were considering his answer. Before, she'd assumed that he was just naturally charming, but these days, she was starting to notice how he seemed to think about it every time, before he opened his mouth.

“It's a pretty creepy place,” Akira replied.

“Yeah...” Sumire nodded after a moment's hesitation. “What sort of patients have you talked to?”

Akira jabbed a thumb at the room behind him. “I actually found this. There's an office with some records and stuff. You want to see?”

“Oh, yes please, show me,” Sumire said with a smile, and Akira lead her into an office with a desk and a computer and some filing cabinets at the back. The computer had been left on, and Akira leaned forward over the desk to click on a folder, opening it up.

“There's a whole bunch of videos of like, patient interviews,” Akira said, scrolling through a big folder of video files.

Hearing that, Sumire squirmed a bit. “Should we really be watching them?”

Akira turned and raised an eyebrow at her. “They've already been brainwashed, and you're worried about invading their privacy?” A smile quirked at his lips.

Sumire gave him a look and jerked her face away, feeling a bit huffy. “I was just thinking, I wouldn't like someone else rummaging through my subconscious without my consent...” she trailed off. This was treading into dangerous territory, and she couldn't go blabbing on her own. She bit her lip.

“Isn't that what the Phantom Thieves have always done?” Akira's hand left the computer mouse, leaning against the desk as he turned to give her a dark look.

It was hard to argue when he looked at her like that. Sumire opened her mouth, then closed it. “We did it to help people,” she said, but it didn't even sound convincing to herself.

“And Maruki's trying to help people, too,” Akira said with clear bitterness as he gestured to the computer. “He's just trying to make people _happy_ ,” he said it like it was a dirty word, and that stuck with Sumire.

“And what's wrong with that? Isn't making people happy what _you_ want, more than anything?” she said, and as soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew it was a mistake. Akira's eyes widened, his lips opening and closing, as he stared at her for a long, painful moment of silence. Sumire realized, belatedly, that she was using the information she'd gleaned in his Palace to accuse him of being just like the person he hated most in the world.

Akira's face finally firmed up, and he turned away from the desk to lean back against it, eyes fixed on the filing cabinets ahead of them. “If you don't want to look at the files, then fine. Let me just tell you a hypothetical story with all details removed.”

“O-okay...” Sumire said, not knowing how to respond to his change in attitude.

“A guy and a girl are in a relationship. They're very passionately in love. But the guy has problems, and he beats the girl, more than once. The girl's best friend is also in love with her. He tries to get her to leave the guy, but she won't do it. Fearing for her life, the best friend kills the guy. Then he goes to prison for it.” Akira turned to Sumire. “Sad ending for everyone. How do you fix this scenario?”

“I...I suppose have the girl leave the boyfriend to begin with, and date the best friend?”

“But she doesn't want to date the best friend. She's in love with the guy who beats her. So do you remove her feelings and induce her to fall for the guy she doesn't want to date?”

Sumire folded her arms and looked down. “I mean, it would be best if she left him of her own free will.”

“But she doesn't. She won't. So you—with your full knowledge of the situation and desire to make everyone happy, revive the dead boyfriend and brainwash him into not beating his girlfriend anymore. The best friend is let out of prison and lives his life again. But then what happens?”

“What happens?” Sumire had the feeling she knew what it might be, but she asked anyway.

“You forgot to erase one thing,” Akira tapped his temple. “The best friend still hates the guy _so much,_ he kills him again, goes to prison again. So you revive the boyfriend again, free the best friend again. But these days, the boyfriend is different. In order to make him the kind of guy who doesn't beat his girlfriend, his personality has been changed quite a bit. The girl loses interest in him.”

“That's...kind of messed up,” Sumire hugged herself. “She only liked him when he was beating her?”

“But that's what happens,” Akira continued, turning back to the wall again. “So they break up. The boyfriend's love for the girl is erased, because it made him unhappy. And the girl is put together with the best friend. But now this means she's not leaving her hometown to study abroad. She settles down with the best friend, and it's fine, they're happy.”

“...Are they happy?”

“Sure. Her shadow says she's happy, so she is. It also says that she's never really fallen in love, but she feels like she could settle down with just about anyone good enough and be satisfied. That she's happy with the best friend, but she'd be happy with anyone else, too. And she doesn't need to cause suffering for herself by leaving her family to pursue an education, she can just be happy right here being married and working at the local grocery store. And they all lived happily ever after.”

Sumire looked at the bitter look on Akira's face, then at the floor.

“Hey,” Akira turned back to her, pushing off the desk. “If that were you. What would you pick?”

“What would _I_ pick?” Taken aback by the question, Sumire touched her hand to her chest.

“I mean,” Akira's eyes were pointed down and away from her, his manner strangely diffident. “Would you choose to be with someone you're passionate about, who makes you suffer, or someone who's good and can make you happy?”

“I mean...wouldn't it be best to go for the one who makes you happy? If they're happy with you?” Sumire said, but her voice didn't even sound sure to her own ears.

“But what do you _want?_ ” Akira looked up, leaning toward her. “What do _you_ want?”

Sumire looked back at him, but she couldn't give him an answer. She didn't have an answer.

So she gave him a cop-out. “I'd like to make you happy,” she said with a weak smile.

The smile he returned to her didn't seem all that happy. Then he circled around her and the desk, going for the door. “You should probably see how the others are doing.”

“Senpai—” Sumire called, and he turned back. “...Are you okay?” She wasn't sure what use it was asking, but she had to ask.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Really caring about anything will make you suffer.” And without explaining what he meant, he left the room.

x x x

After a while, the Phantom Thieves all met up again in one of the waiting rooms at the Heart Hospital to discuss the results of their investigation.

“There's a lotta effed up people here, man,” Ryuji said as he dropped into one of the pristine white couches there.

“No kidding,” Ann agreed, plopping down beside him. “Exploring this place gives me the creeps.”

“These people definitely need help...” Haru said quietly, seating primly across from them, and there were further remarks of agreement from Yusuke, Futaba, and Makoto.

“What do you think?” Sumire said, deliberately turning the discussion toward Akira, but he just shrugged and looked over at Goro.

“We all know this place is creepy,” Goro said, not offering any opinion of his own. “Let's just figure out what we have to do next.”

Futaba said the computers here were connected to a larger server, and that she could have them a lead soon, so they decided to leave that to her and call it a night. They left the building, air wobbling around them as they returned to the normal world. It was dark out, by now, the winter night air chilly around them, making Sumire pull the collar of her coat closer together.

The whole group walked together to the station, and the chat between them turned to things like school and teachers, or movies and mutual acquaintances. They lingered a while at the station—tired, but not quite willing to part ways yet.

Standing outside the stairs that lead down into the station, Sumire's gaze travelled the faces of the group with concern, but it seemed everyone's minds had shifted away from the Metaverse already. Had they already gotten so good at distracting themselves from things?

Soon enough, though, there was a break in the conversation, and Goro took a step back from the group. “I should get going,” he said, and Sumire didn't fail to notice Yusuke's gaze shift over to him as the two of them shared an eye signal.

It seemed Sumire wasn't the only one to notice—Ann's sharp eyes were watching the exchange with thinly-disguised curiosity.

Akira was watching, too. “You guys have fun,” he said with a smile, waving at Goro and Yusuke.

Goro immediately shot Akira a look, eyes narrowing, but Akira's response was just a wider smile. “What?” Then he turned to Sumire. “Let's go.”

Sumire practically jumped in response. “Huh?”

Akira didn't say anything more, just jerked his head in the direction of the station with a small smile on his face and started walking, forcing Sumire to rush after him.

She couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on her back as she pattered down the station stairs.


	32. Black Butterfly

When they got back to Akira's apartment, Akira had to shove aside a bag of trash waiting to be thrown out in order to get the door open all the way.

Taking off her shoes, Sumire looked around the place.

Maybe this was pretty typical for a boy, but she was still surprised, anyway. She'd somehow gotten the impression that Akira was a tidier type, so seeing empty cup noodles scattered on his kitchen counter and dirty clothes flung over the living room table was a bit of a shock.

“I hope you're not living on cup noodles and convenience store lunches,” she said with a glance to the kitchen as Akira padded past her into the living room.

Akira didn't respond to that remark, however, instead kneeling down to rummage around in the shelves by his TV. “You know, I never got to see the whole _Featherman R,_ ” he said. “I got halfway, but stuff happened before I could see the end. So I just bought the full DVD set the other day, but I haven't watched it yet. You wanna see it?”

“Umm...” His suggestion was rather out of the blue, Sumire didn't quite know how to respond. “Well, sure, why not,” she said finally.

Akira had been rather silent on the train ride over, and she'd worried about what to say. But if he just wanted to hang out and watch DVDs like normal friends, maybe that was best.

So she settled down on a floor cushion in Akira's living room while he fished through his cupboards to make some tea for them both, and they watched _Featherman R._

Sumire had already seen the whole show, so they started past the halfway point of the series, at the last episode that Akira remembered seeing, and watched through to the end. Sumire had half-expected Akira would use the opportunity to try to flirt with her or snuggle up, but he was actually fully engaged in the show, sitting cross-legged on the cushion next to her, sometimes leaning back on his hands, sometimes leaning forward during the tenser scenes.

When it finally came to the end and a slow, emotional rendition of the opening theme played during the credits roll, Akira finally unfolded his legs to stretch out in front of him as he leaned back with a sigh.

“So what did you think?” Sumire turned to ask him, sitting with her knees to the side in a relaxed posture.

Akira tilted his head thoughtfully. “I think it's a good ending. It wrapped everything up. I guess...it's just because it's been so long since I saw the beginning of the season, I'm not as into it now as I was then. It doesn't have the same impact.”

“I get what you mean,” she said with a nod. “It's easy to forget everything, after that long away from it. You're not as attached anymore.”

Akira sort of vaguely nodded in response, but he didn't say anything right away. “...You do forget, huh,” he muttered, and then there was a long silence between them.

The mugs of tea on the table in front of them had long since gone cold. Akira's cup had hardly been drunk at all.

“...Are you all right, Senpai?” Sumire finally mustered up her courage to say. If they were going to have a talk, then it was now or never. She'd rehearsed many conversations in her head, but most of them were full of things she'd promised she wouldn't say. Still—she needed to say something.

He turned his head to her with a smile that didn't go to his eyes. “I'll be fine.” Then he heaved himself up, gathering their mugs to take them back to the kitchen.

Sumire sat there for a moment, frowning to herself, before she got up and followed Akira there. “Senpai,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Are you lying?”

“Not necessarily,” he replied evasively.

Sumire just about puffed up her cheeks at him, quite frustrated with his attitude. Carefully considering her words, she hedged as best she could around the subjects she knew she couldn't touch to press him. “I know...a lot of things have changed. And maybe you'd like it to be different. But...accepting your situation doesn't always have to be a bad thing.”

Sumire thought the best situation would be if she could change Akira's heart through talking to him directly, so that the Phantom Thieves wouldn't have to go through his Palace at all. And then they could all face the Counselor together. Maybe that wouldn't be ideal, but Sumire had no ideal answers. She didn't want to betray Akira or the others, and this was the only potential compromise she could think of.

Dumping the cold tea out into the sink, Akira paused, mug in midair. “Accepting my situation...huh.”

“You've lost a lot of things,” Sumire barreled on, “But this an opportunity, too. To make friends with everyone all over again. To make a new life.” She paused a moment, examining his face, downturned over the sink, but found nothing there. “But...it's okay to mourn things, too. And I understand if you...want to blame me for everything. If you're going to blame anyone, blame me, not the others.”

“I never blamed you,” Akira shook his head, lowering the empty mug to the counter. “You never did a single thing wrong.”

“But you can still blame me,” Sumire pressed. “Just make it me, and no one else. Please.”

Akira just kept shaking his head, leaning his palms against the edge of the counter. “You never did anything wrong,” he repeated. “You're perfect.”

“Senpai...” Sumire couldn't understand why he would say a thing like that. It didn't even make sense to her. She would rather he say something angry, but Akira just straightened up and turned to her, putting a hand by the side of her face.

“Everything's going to be okay,” he said, and there was something strangely convincing about his tone, like he believed it himself, and it made her want to believe it, too.

When his head moved forward to kiss her, though, she turned her face to the side. “Senpai, what about...”

She couldn't finish.

The truth was, Sumire was selfish. In the past, she'd told herself all sorts of stories about how she would never even be on the same playing field as Akira, and in her mind, there had always been someone else there—Kasumi, and then Goro. Sumire hadn't even _existed_ in his world—how could she possibly imagine him seeing someone who was like air?

But now, things were different. She wasn't nobody anymore. She had become a _person._ She had the opportunity to take a heart that she wanted, and hadn't she been doing just that, all year?

She saw now that Akira needed her—just like she had needed him, once. He didn't have anyone else.

Wasn't she allowed to want this?

But still, out of a stinging sense of obligation, she muttered, eyes on the lower cabinet beside her, “What about Goro?”

“What about him?” Akira shot back, just a hint of sharpness in his tone, and Sumire bit her lip.

“...If you...still have feelings for him...”

Akira cut her off with an insistent kiss, bringing her chin around to face him, and Sumire didn't bring up Goro's name again.

x x x

After that, when Sumire invited Akira to hang out with the Phantom Thieves at Penguin Sniper for billiards, he readily agreed.

She had thought things would be tense, but it was actually surprisingly not. Akira was a little reserved, but friendly enough, and the afternoon went by without incident.

When she went over to Akira's apartment—occasionally bringing her cooking for him—he seemed more calm and at ease, with the odd smile at the times they were alone together. They talked a little about the time before the Phantom Thieves and about Kasumi, as well as other trivial topics.

Sumire felt quite certain that he was slowly coming to rely on her, if in a small way. She had no certainty about anything, but she felt hopeful.

Her sense of tension gradually started to unwind, even as the Phantom Thieves continued to make their way through Akira's palace.

x x x

After Ohya, the other confidantes in Akira's palace went much the same way. After gathering the Hanged Man, Star, and Fortune cards, Sumire was feeling quite exhausted—emotionally, if not physically—so it was a relief when Goro stepped in to handle the Hierophant. He was closer to Mr. Sakura than she was, after all.

With each card she won, she felt the bonds in her heart grow stronger, while Akira's palace seemed to become more...subdued.

It seemed that while Akira's confidantes often overlapped with people Sumire knew, their connections weren't quite the same. Certain friends of hers weren't in his palace, while others were in fact friends of Goro's. Goro handled Death, the Moon, and the Tower, while Sumire collected the Sun and Temperance.

The Phantom Thieves noticed the cognitive versions of themselves in Akira's palace, of course, but Sumire decided to steer away from them for now, and the others readily went along with it. She felt an inexplicable reluctance about it, and maybe the others did, too.

It was hard to put your finger on how, but each time they entered Akira's palace, things seemed a bit...different. Maybe the lights were a bit dimmer, the cognitions a little less talkative, the music playing in the background a little more subdued. It was a little like being at a cafe or restaurant shortly before close, when the manager would make these subtle signs to encourage the customers to leave without explicitly coming to tell them it was almost eleven at night. The others seemed to take it as a sign that they were making progress, but Sumire was sure something else was going on.

It was around this time when Sumire encountered a little girl in blue sitting on the edge of one of the walkways, swinging her legs as she gazed down into the space below her thoughtfully.

“I was wondering when you'd come to me,” the little girl said, turning to Sumire with a little smile. “Come, sit,” she waved Sumire to the spot beside her.

“Sumire!” Morgana piped up, a little frown on his face was he waved at her, and Sumire leaned over so the cat could whisper into her ear. “I don't think that's a cognition. She smells...different.”

Sumire looked back at the girl in blue, and she got the same feeling. She wasn't like the other cognitions here, and Sumire had the odd feeling like she'd met her before. She seemed just like those two jailers in blue she'd once had.

“It's okay,” Sumire said to Morgana. “I've met people like her before, and they helped me. So...I think it'll be okay.” Though that was half a lie, now knowing the true nature of the Counselor. But Sumire had never gotten the sense that the twins had been out to harm her, and she didn't feel this girl was dangerous.

Morgana still seemed wary, but he backed off. “Okay...if you say so.”

Sumire gave the others a look, and they took that as a signal to wander their own separate ways, though Morgana stuck around to keep watch, just in case. Ryuji complained about coming here when they weren't even going to do anything, but Ann told him off, saying, “What if Sumire came here alone and something happened, huh?!”

“It's been a long time,” the girl in blue said as Sumire sat down at the edge of the bridge next to her. Sumire cocked her head curiously. “Ah,” the girl continued, “But perhaps the first time, for you? You may call me Lavenza.”

“Don't I know you?”

Lavenza tilted her head one way, then the other. “You know me in a sense, but perhaps not the right sense. In one sense, we have known each other for a long time.”

“You mean...from the worlds before?” The girl's cryptic manner of speaking seemed to belie her young age, and Sumire very much got the impression she was older than she appeared.

“We have indeed met in earlier worlds,” Lavenza nodded. “I suppose you have come to take the Strength.” She sighed, her head sinking a little. “We're not supposed to show bias, but I admit I'm rather reluctant to give it to you. This...is not the outcome I would have preferred.”

Sumire's gaze dropped as well. “I'm sorry.”

Lavenza shook her head. “Us meeting like this means that in the depths of his heart, my Trickster has desired this. And if he deems it necessary, I will cooperate. Though...” she paused, “Happiness for a being such as myself is not the same as human happiness. Will you take the challenge nevertheless?” she asked, turning her head to Sumire with a slightly inhuman, yellow glint in her eye.

Of course, Sumire had no choice but to agree.

“Then we have a contract,” Lavenza said with a broad, slightly toothy smile, and Sumire was whisked away into darkness.

x x x

Sumire awoke in a blue cell, with Lavenza standing outside the bars, book in hand. “Welcome to the Velvet Room,” she said with a full, sweeping curtsy. “This is a place beyond time and space, but you already know that, so I'll skip the monologue. I've always found it _so_ tedious, saying the same thing over and over and over...” Lavenza tossed the book over her head, letting it hit the floor behind her with a surprisingly loud thump that made Sumire jump.

“Why am I here again?” Sumire asked, looking around and pressing her hands against the bars. “I stopped dreaming about this place a while ago...” She'd thought for a while that meant it was over—that she was free.

Lavenza made a big, dramatic sigh before turning to Sumire with her hands on her hips. “Normally, I would say some cryptic bullshit here, but that's only fun when you're playing with someone smart enough to get it. And _you,_ little puppet, are not one of the fun toys.” Her manner seemed entirely different now from how she had been in the main hall, throwing Sumire off-balance.

“Are you—” Sumire cut herself off, trying to gather her thoughts. “What is this? Just what's going on, here?”

“ _What's going on?_ ” Lavenza did in a shockingly accurate imitation of Sumire's own voice, thrown back at her in a way that made her wince. “ _Who are you? What do you want?_ Can't you people come up with some more original lines? _Please_ ,” she rolled her eyes. “Let me spell it out for you so we can get past this stage. In order to get my card,” Lavenza's hand slipped into her pocket to draw out a blue card and flash it at Sumire, “you have to complete an assignment, just like my darling Trickster once did. Even an lifeless puppet like you should be able to accomplish that much.”

“Excuse me!” Sumire snapped back at the little girl. “I don't think I've ever encountered a friend of Senpai's who was this rude!”

“A friend? A _friend?_ ” Lavenza burst out laughing, her voice high, sweet, and ringing. “Ah, my dear, you mistake a bond for friendship. There are all sorts of bonds in the world—bonds with enemies or victims or oppressors, or with an idol who doesn't even know you exist, or a transactional bond with someone you have no feelings for at all but nevertheless _need—_ oh, I could tell you of _so much,_ foolish little puppet, but your head has not the room for it.”

“So then what are you to him?” Sumire demanded, growing suspicion in her heart. She wasn't sure what was going on, but her gut was telling her something was wrong, here. This confidante was not like the others.

“What are _you_ to him?” the girl in blue turned the question back at Sumire. “That's the more pertinent question.”

“That's none of your business! Just tell me what this 'assignment' you want me to do is!” Sumire shot back, finally losing her temper.

A smile crawled up Lavenza's face. “This _is_ your assignment. All you have to do is answer my questions honestly.”

This felt like a trick. “Let me out of this place,” Sumire said, rattling at the bars of her cell, even though she knew there was no escape from this cell. She turned back to the spot that had previously sent her back to the real world and tried to will herself to leave, but nothing happened.

“If you think that's an option, then you're even more foolish than I imagined. But if you want to waste time, well—we have all the time in the world, here. Feel free to spend a thousand years resisting in futility. I do so love seeing humans go mad.”

“What _are_ you?” Sumire whirled around to face Lavenza again, putting her hands on the bars.

“Back to the boring questions again? That won't help you escape. Answer my questions honestly, and you'll be freed. That's not too difficult, even for you, is it?”

“Why are you being such a...such a jerk to me! I don't even know you!” Sumire was reaching the end of her patience.

“ _Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris_ ,” Lavenza replied as if reciting something, though Sumire didn't have a clue what that meant. “So tell me, little puppet: what are you to Akira Kurusu?”

“Why is that any of your business?”

“Everything is my business.”

They were going round in circles. Sumire stalked back to the bed in the cell and sat down for a moment, trying to think about what to do. She tried to make herself wake up, as if from a dream—she tried to summon her persona, she kicked at the walls, but nothing worked.

“Are you done your pointless little struggle yet?” The girl in blue called from outside her cell.

Sumire didn't answer right away, and she stayed sitting on the bed. But finally, after a long pause, she answered, “...I'm a good friend.”

“ _Bzzzt! Wrong!_ ” Lavenza answered back instantly. “You're not being honest. But I expected as much, from you. Maybe we can shake a little honesty out of you this way,” she said, and as she spoke, her voice changed and morphed, drawing Sumire to look over toward her. With a start, Sumire realized that the little girl had become Joker, in his long coat and white domino mask—but with yellow eyes glowing behind it. “Do you want to know what you are to me, Sumire?” he asked, his expression serious.

Sumire leaped off the bed, away from the bars. “Wh-what is this? Are you Joker's shadow, then?” That couldn't be. This malicous, nasty girl in blue couldn't be the real Akira. This was some other creature.

“That's me,” said the yellow-eyed Joker with a broadening grin. “And don't you want to hear what I have to say? I normally don't tell you anything, do I? You _want_ to hear the deepest voice of my inner soul _so_ badly.”

“No,” Sumire shook her head. “Not from...whatever it is _you_ are. If Senpai trusts me enough—”

“Ha!” the yellow-eyed Joker cut her off. “Never going to happen. You know that.”

“I—”

Joker came right up to her cell in a single stride and slammed the bars with both hands, making Sumire jump. Leaning right in with a vicious snarl on his face, he said in a low voice, “You betrayed me.”

A few steps back from the bars, Sumire froze, caught in his gaze like a deer in headlights. “I-I didn't, I—”

“You fucking _bitch_ _!_ ” Joker's hands slammed the bars again. “I _died_ for _you._ And how do you repay me? You took everything away from me and faked your way into _my_ place, and now you want me to _trust_ you?” he sneered. “Forget it. You're nothing but a fake.”

“I'm _not—_ ”

“Fake fake fake fake _fake!_ ” Joker drowned her out with chanting. “You think that's what _I_ was? You think being _nice_ and falling over backwards to please everyone around you is a personality? Endlessly kind and understanding and helpful to anyone in need? Always good, always righteous, always a hero of justice? That's just a pale imitation of what you _thought_ I was, a boring fairy story told by a little girl with no knowledge of humanity! You never _knew_ me or understood me, and you never will, because I'll never trust an _imposter_ like you!”

“Shut up!” Sumire yelled back at him, but she didn't have anything more to say, and when she trailed off, the yellow-eyed Joker filled the silence for her.

“You know what I really want, don't you?” Joker clenched a fist in front of his chest as his eyes went glassy. “I want someone with a _real heart._ Someone like Kasumi, or Goro. You...” he leaned his head back slightly, a pitying look on his face. “When's the last time you even _wanted_ something?”

“Shut _up!_ I can tell you're not the real Senpai! You're wasting your time with these...” she flailed her hands, her mouth moving faster than her brain, “...stupid mind games!” She glared back at the yellow-eyed Joker, but her heart was pounding in her throat, and her hands were shaking.

A crooked grin spread over Joker's face. “ _You're_ the one wasting time, here. Just tell me what you are to me, honestly, and poof! No more mind games.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?!”

“Why are you having so much trouble saying one short little sentence? Is the truth _so_ frightening, you pathetic little puppet?”

“...”

“All right,” said the yellow-eyed Joker, thrusting his hands casually in his pockets. “Then I'll make it _very_ easy for you. All you have to do is repeat after me.” Leaning his red-gloved hands on the bars again, he looked deep into her eyes. “Sumire Yoshizawa is nothing to Akira Kurusu.”

Sumire glared back at him, unyielding. But the striking yellow of Joker's eyes seemed to pull her down, dragging her deeper than she'd ever known, and somehow, she _knew_ that nothing this Joker said was lies. It felt true, truer than anything she'd ever heard before.

“...Sumire Yoshizawa is nothing to Akira Kurusu,” she repeated slowly in a monotone. “Is that what you wanted to hear? It doesn't mean any—”

Joker popped out of existence, immediately replaced by the little girl in blue. “Thank you,” she interrupted Sumire with a bright grin. “Now was that so hard? Let's move on to question two.”

Sumire just stood there, wordless, as she realized her left thumbnail was digging into her palm.

Lacing her fingers behind her back, Lavenza paced in front of the cell. “Question two. What are you to your friends?”

“My friends? What do you mean...”

“I mean all of them,” Lavenza replied, and as she spoke, she paced slowly around the room, her form shifting with every step. She became Futaba, then Ann, then Ryuji, then Makoto and Yusuke and Haru, and then Iwai and Chihaya, and all Sumire's other confidantes, becoming every single important figure in Sumire's life as she made a full circle around the room until she returned to her initial spot and became a little girl again.

“What are you to your friends?” The little girl asked.

“I...I'm a friend? A confidante?” Sumire answered after a moment of hesitation.

Lavenza sighed, and then her form shifted back to Joker again. “From the side, a profile; from above, but a speck: far, near, high, low, no two parts alike. Why can't I tell the true shape of a girl?”

“Are you—trying to tell me that I don't know myself? Then how am I supposed to answer your question?!”

“You _do_ know, you just pretend you don't.” Joker gave her a serious look, then said earnestly, “You don't seriously believe in this world of the Counselor's, do you? You're not like the others. You _know_ this is all fake.”

“It's not fake!” Sumire said, the very words her friends had assured her of over and over. With them supporting her, she could believe they were true. The _were_ true. “It doesn't matter what it was in the past—our present is real. And our experiences together are real. Our time together was real.”

“Was it?” Joker leaned his shoulder against the bars as he eyed her with a sidelong glance. “You've seen for yourself that you're just walking through the paces of my relationships. You've been pasted into my life by an outside force.”

“I made my own choices! I wasn't sitting back and taking orders from anyone! This is my life, too! And all my friends are my friends!”

“Are they really?” Joker turned to face her, teeth bared in a grin. “When I could so easily replace you, as you've replaced me? You know that's what I want, more than anything.” Leaning his forehead against the bars, he said in a low voice, “To take all _my_ friends back, as I so rightfully deserve.” Pulling back from the bars, Joker continued, “So let me ask you once more: What is Sumire Yoshizawa to her friends?”

Sumire knew the truth that the yellow-eyed Joker wanted. Was there even any point in denying it, when whatever this Joker was seemed to know everything, anyway?

“Sumire Yoshizawa is nothing to her friends,” she said at the same flat monotone as before. “Is that what you want me to say?”

“I just want the truth and nothing but the truth, little puppet,” Joker replied. “And now for the final question of your assignment.” Joker took a step back from the bars, and his body shifted again—into a similar costume with a different form.

It was Sumire herself, in her thief costume. “Tell me the true shape of a girl, little puppet. Who is Sumire Yoshizawa to Sumire Yoshizawa?”

x x x

Sumire reappeared in the hall of Akira's palace again, the Strength card in her grasp.

“You got the card!” Morgana greeted her with a card. “...Are you okay, though? You're looking kinda pale.”

Sumire looked at the card in her hand, blinking once at it. She turned it over and looked at the back side. Before, there had been something black and shapeless here, but it was gone now.

 _Thou has turned a vow into a blood oath,_ a thousand voices seemed to roar in her ear. _Thy bond shall become the seed of truth that awakens the chaos in thy heart. And thou wilt ne'er be satisfied by a world of order..._

“I'm not taking orders from _you_ ,” Sumire hissed under her breath, but there was only laughter, and then silence.

Then, seeing Morgana was looking at her with concern, Sumire cleared her throat. “Just a little tired,” she said, then looked around. “Where are the others?”

Sumire didn't have to wait long. The other Phantom Thieves gathered to her within minutes, and Goro brought news with him.

“I found the Counselor,” he said, jabbing a thumb behind him to indicate down a back hall that Sumire had yet to explore. He took a look at Sumire and seemed to come to some conclusion in his mind, then added, “I can handle him. But we should do at least one more tonight if we want to stay on schedule.”

Sumire held back a sigh and nodded. “All right, that sounds fine.”

Goro looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “Everyone should come see him, though.”

“Yeah, dude,” Ryuji said, making a _yikes_ face. “He's pretty, uh, y'know.”

“Great vocabulary use, Ryuji,” Ann shot at him.

“Hey, you take a look at the guy, and your vocabulary will start going to shit, too!”

x x x

They found The Counselor—or the cognition of him—sitting in a white, clinical-looking room sitting back on a soft-looking easy chair in front of a coffee table that had couches on either side. When Sumire opened the door, he leaped to his feet with a broad smile on his face, waving the whole group in.

“Oh, come in!” he said, lifting one hand to adjust his glasses. “I've been hoping you all would come. Counting on it, actually. Well,” he said with an awkward cough, noticing everyone staring at him in shock. “Since the situation is as you can see. I am, shall we say, slightly...”

“Stabbed?” Ann provided helpfully, her voice only going a little bit squeaky.

The Counselor's cognition had a big gaping hole through the middle of his torso, through which blood was basically gushing nonstop, soaking his sweater and white lab coat.

The Counselor laughed. “Aha-ha. Yes, I'm sorry about this, I know it's a little bit gross, but don't worry about me! I'm still alive, actually.”

“Dude, is that something you can survive?” Ryuji said, looking rather green around the edges. “What the hell happened?”

“Quite a lot, but it's not so bad as you think,” the Counselor said, his manner incredibly soothing, and it was bizarre how it seemed he was trying to calm them while seeing nothing of his own state. Sumire tried to look away from him, but her eyes just kept getting drawn back to the gruesome spectacle.

“Oh! But first...” And then the Counselor reached straight into the hole in his torso with one hand, making squelching sounds as he groped around in there—Ryuji and Makoto both blanched and looked away—before pulling out a strangely not-bloody blue card. “Here, take my card,” he said, handing Sumire his card, which she took with some hesitation.

“You're not going to make us pass your happiness test?” Goro asked suspiciously. He seemed particularly tense around the Counselor, holding himself like he was ready for a fight.

The Counselor waved a hand. “Too much trouble. And besides, I'm on your side. Since, you know, this happened,” he patted his stomach.

“So it was Akira who did that to you,” Yusuke said. “I can't believe it...or perhaps I can.”

“How horrible...” Haru murmured. “I didn't think he was the type to do something like this, but...”

“This changes everything,” Makoto said, attempting to gather herself. “If Akira has the Counselor under his control...”

“Whoa, I guess he was the bad guy, after all,” said Futaba.

The wheels in Sumire's mind were still turning. The others were still talking about Akira, about the Counselor, about this whole situation, but she wasn't listening. Her mind was elsewhere. She knew this implied things about Akira, but she couldn't absorb it yet. This whole conversation just felt so comically mundane and unreal. She looked around at the others' faces—they seemed grossed out, but not horrified at the revelation of what Akira had done. How come they weren't more upset? Was it really just her?

Sumire opened her mouth to suggest _maybe this isn't as it seems,_ but before she could say anything, the Counselor spoke.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I'm sure you have many questions...” he trailed off, and Sumire saw his eyes trailing around the room.

Following his gaze, Sumire saw a little black butterfly fluttering about. It was zig-zagging its way toward The Counselor on a chaotic trajectory, as if it couldn't fly in a straight line—the Counselor clapped his hands at it with a scowl as if he were trying to swat a mosquito, but missed.

In a heartbeat, the little butterfly settled down on top of his head, and the yellow of his eyes flashed. “but first, I have one of my own,” he continued smoothly. “As you have seen, Akira Kurusu's goal has been nothing but to make you all happy. And yet, completing this palace will do the very opposite for him. Are you all satisfied with that outcome?”

Somehow, Sumire felt as if The Counselor was looking at her, particularly. She was caught in his sharp, inhuman gaze.

“I feel badly for him,” Makoto said. “But he's making decisions for the world beyond himself. And this time, he's really crossed a line.”

“Yeah,” Futaba agreed with a nod. “We already agreed we're doing this. We're not letting some cognition talk us out of this now.”

“We have our own lives here, and he's trying to mess it all up,” Ann said. “And it's not just about us. It's about...everyone.”

“If he's willing to do something like this...” Haru looked at the Counselor, “I don't think we can let him take control of the world.”

There was a sea of nods among the Thieves, and the bleeding Counselor smiled warmly at them. Sumire felt as if she was in a dream, just watching the whole scene play out around her, outside of her control, and looking into the Counselor's yellow eyes, it seemed even more clear that was the case.

But Sumire believed in her friends. She _believed_ in them. She did. They had made her who she was, and she would give anything for them.

“All right, I just wanted to understand your conviction. Here.” And the Counselor pulled something out of his pocket—a key—and handed it to Sumire. “That's the key to the basement. Please, come rescue me,” he said, and then with a bow of his head, slowly faded out of existence.

Sumire looked around at the others, examining their faces, trying to see what _they_ would want, at least.

“That was real gross,” Ryuji said, looking green around the edges.

“Yeah, really gross,” Haru agreed, sounding not all that grossed out.

“What about that butterfly?” Sumire blurted out, unable to restrain herself.

But everyone gave her a blank look.

“Butterfly?” Yusuke tilted his head. “What sort?”

“You didn't—” Sumire turned to Goro and gave him a pleading look, but he gave her just the slightest shake of his head in response, signaling that she drop it for now.

x x x

On the way out of Akira's palace, the Thieves all talked on about what to do next, but Sumire didn't really participate, even when her friends turned the discussion to her with concern, asking if she was okay. She assured them she was just tired, but she wasn't even really listening to herself talk. Her mind was still lost in the little blue prison that had felt more real than anything else that had happened that day. How long had she even been in there?

She didn't know.

She only snapped out of it at the end, after they had all left the palace. Coming back to the real world brought her back to her senses, somehow. The first thing Sumire did when they were out was seek out Goro, and say out loud the words that had been swirling around in her head all this time.

“You _saw_ it,” Sumire whisper-hissed to Goro. They had left Akira's palace for the night, and the other Thieves were filtering off on their own ways home.

“Listen to me,” Goro leaned in close to her, “If you ever see that butterfly, ignore it. Don't listen to it, don't speak to it. And assume everything that cognition of the Counselor said could be lies.”

“What? Why? And why don't you want to tell the others about this?” Sumire pressed, drawing herself up as tall as she could to get close to eye level with Goro.

Goro's eyes turned away and he shifted uncomfortably. If anything, he looked _scared._ “I can't tell you how I know. You just need to stay away. And if it's been in Kurusu's palace, then all the more reason to finish it quickly. He has trouble manifesting in the real world.”

“ _He?_ You _know_ something. Why can't you tell me?”

“It's none of your business!” Goro snapped at her in a sudden, sharp fury, making Sumire step back in shock. Seeing her reaction, his expression relaxed again, apologetic. “I'm sorry. You just have to trust me. Please.”

Then without waiting for her response, he turned and left as if fleeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris: It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.  
> Why can’t I tell the true shape of a girl? See: Why can't I tell the true shape of Lushan?
> 
> Maybe this'll only be like, 5 more chapters? We're finally headed to the climax. Everything has been set up, and it's time to kick this sandcastle DOOWN!
> 
> The more I write, the more I'm sure I'm creating plot inconsistencies and holes everywhere. Or that maybe things don't make sense. If you've found anything confusing or contradictory, I'd love to have it pointed out. >_< There's a lot going on and I'm having trouble keeping track of all the moving parts!


End file.
